Between the Devil and Draco Malfoy
by Queen of Smoke and Mirrors
Summary: Seventeen is a dangerous age. Hermione Granger, arrogant and precocious and bored of her mundane life, thinks she can handle a deal with the devil. But Draco Malfoy - the devil's own son - plans on dragging her down to Hell with him. Dramione AU with demons.
1. I: The Road to Hell

**Chapter I: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions**

_**(proverbial)**_

"So," Hermione says, eyes scanning the blurb of the children's novel a ten-year-old boy has just handed her. "Who is the protagonist of _Alex Rider: Stormbreaker_?"

The boy frowns. "Proto-what?"

"Hermione!" her co-volunteer Lavender hisses at her. "We've talked about this, remember? Use kids' words for the kids!" She smiles kindly at the boy. "What Hermione is trying to say is, who's the main character in _Alex Rider: Stormbreaker_?"

"It's Alex Rider," he says, his tone indicating he suspects them both of idiocy. Hermione agrees with him on one count at least: Lavender Brown is an idiot.

It's a blistering hot Tuesday at the end of July, and Hermione is volunteering at her local library. Helping out with the annual Summer Reading Challenge for primary-school children involves asking them banal questions to ensure they haven't just skim-read the six books they need to complete before getting a special medal. Ordinarily, you wouldn't catch her dead near a bunch of snotty-nosed kids, but she'll be applying to study medicine at Cambridge at the end of the summer. She needs this role so that she can pretend to be a sociable, well-rounded person – two attributes she most definitely does not possess.

Lavender disposes of the boy and turns to face Hermione, scowling. "We talked about this!" she exclaims. "Stop using your fancy crap on the babies! Can you just talk in normal English for once, please? Use 'main character' instead of pro – instead of the bullshit you learn at private school, okay?"

"I don't believe in patronising younger children," she responds coolly. 'Protagonist' is a perfectly suitable word for a ten-year-old to learn. The dig about her school, she ignores entirely. She goes to St Paul's Girls', which does cost £27,000 per year, but it's not like Lavender doesn't go to Francis Holland herself. They live in Islington, for God's sake. You can't swing a cat in Islington without hitting a score of privately educated people.

To avoid further conversation, Hermione grabs a stack of returned books which need to be re-shelved and gets out from behind the desk.

The library consists largely of one long, low room, with rows of books in high wooden shelves and circular tables for patrons to read at. This is not the beanbag type of library. All the chairs are straight-backed and date probably from the Victorian era, just like the library and ridiculously dim lighting. It's no wonder that people prefer to borrow their books and get out as quickly as possible instead of sticking around to read.

Apart from Lavender and a couple of browsers, Hermione is all alone. Not an uncommon state of affairs. She's usually alone.

She hefts the slipping pile of books up higher into her arms. The first one is _Wuthering Heights._ It's promptly shelved under 'B.' So are novels by Ballard, Balogh, and Burgess. Zusak takes a bit more effort, however; Hermione is forced to skirt the shelves until she comes across the narrow, ill-lit section of shelving devoted to 'Z.' She crouches down to slide _The Book Thief_ into the bottom-shelf gap she can see.

She pauses. The book on the left side of the gap has no surname on its spine.

Well, that's annoying. She needs to know that author's surname so she can make sure she's slipped Zusak into his correct alphabetical place. Why is there no sticker on the spine? Someone (no doubt Lavender) has slipped up. Her irritation mounting, Hermione deftly pulls out the anonymous book.

It's bound in black leather and soft to the touch. She stares down in stupefaction at the words embossed on the cover. _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_? What is that, some sort of roleplaying Dungeons & Dragons manual? She flips to the first page. The title is repeated there, printed in the same razor-thin lettering you see on seventeenth-century title pages, but there's no author.

There's no huge mystery about it. It's obviously just some anonymously published book. After all, it's not like the Bible has an identifiable author. But something about it, perhaps the unusual niceness of the cover, has her intrigued. She turns to the contents page.

Her impression of its being some sort of fantasy manual solidifies. On page four, the book claims to offer the secret of immortal life; page seven is summoning the devil for a favour; twelve to sixteen is a variety of 'potions.' Obviously arrant nonsense – Hermione is nothing if not practical – but her insatiable thirst for knowledge is urging her onwards. The book looks old, maybe even Regency era or earlier: the paper is curling and yellow. Whatever is inside will undoubtedly prove an invaluable insight into the little beliefs and superstitions of a bygone age.

Acting on instinct, she slides the book into her arms and holds on.

She races through the rest of the re-shelving and takes the book over to the checkout counter. To her total lack of surprise, there's no stamp inside the front cover declaring it the library's property, nor can she find it in their computer system. Somehow, she'd always known there was no way a book as impressive as _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_ was really part of her mundane little library. Since there's no record of it, she's at liberty to take it home and keep it there permanently. The knowledge puts a spring in her step as she walks home at the end of the day. A free book? Sign her up.

It's five p.m., so her parents will only just be finishing up at the dental surgery they co-own. They won't be home for another hour yet. Hermione makes herself a jacket potato for dinner and munches it without tasting. Her attention is totally and completely on her new book.

She surfaces only for long enough to clear the table and stumble upstairs, then collapses on her bed. Her eyes are still fixed on the words in front of her. Her parents return and call out a greeting she responds to mechanically; the sun starts setting, and the room is slowly plunged into darkness; but still she doesn't move. At one point Crookshanks, the only creature in the entire world she knows loves her unconditionally, appears and curls up in her lap. She pets him absently as she continues reading.

Finally it becomes too dark for Hermione to read, so she's forced to get up and turn on her light. The sudden wash of bright electricity makes her dizzy for a moment. But it also brings clarity: _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_ is a book unlike any other Hermione has read in her seventeen years, and she is not going to sleep tonight without summoning the devil.

Oh, of course she knows it won't actually work. Just like saying 'Bloody Mary' three times while looking into a mirror doesn't actually summon her ghost, no matter what your classmates at primary school tell you. Yet – you do it anyway. You're disappointed, in the end, but in the handful of seconds before your brain catches up to your body you experience a thrill of anxiety and anticipation. Will it work? Will it?

Not even Hermione was a practical enough eight-year-old to resist the lure of whispering 'Bloody Mary' three times into her mirror. And now, she can't resist the lure of performing the very simple ritual laid out on page seven of _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_.

She has a strict bedtime of ten p.m. At least, that's when her parents expect her to be in bed, with no light visible from the crack under her bedroom door. Budding doctors need their sleep. So she gets ready as usual, brushing her teeth and changing into her serviceable cotton pyjamas, but instead of letting herself drift off into a UCAS-inspired stress dream, she recites the periodic table in her head until she's utterly sure her parents are asleep.

Then Hermione eases out of bed and flicks on the light.

She holds her breath for a moment, but her parents shut their bedroom door at night too, so she's safe. She exhales and glances at the clock. Eleven p.m., not quite the witching hour but not far off either. Her heart pounding with heavily restrained excitement, she grabs a pencil from her pencil case and sketches out a rough diamond on her wooden floorboards.

Crookshanks watches her unblinkingly from where he's sprawled on her bed.

She makes sure the diamond is large enough to contain a man. It's a foolish thing to be doing, not least because she knows she'll feel silly when the devil inevitably fails to be summoned, but it's not as though she has anything better to do with her nights. Hermione has no friends and never has. Something about her intensity, her intelligence and aggressiveness, repel people like a bad smell. She's long since given up hope on finding someone who isn't eventually scared away by her relentless drive for more: more knowledge, more organisation, more perfection.

Besides, if – when – the ritual fails, it's not like anyone will ever know.

The next and last part of the ritual involves her blood. She's going to be a doctor, so of course she isn't squeamish, but it does take a lot of deep breathing before she can work up enough fortitude to willingly drive a sharpened pencil through her thumb. She wonders what it says about her that she could bring herself to self-mutilate in pursuit of a totally futile goal, then the pain drives the thought from her mind. She hisses as she squeezes out a few anaemic drops of blood from her thumb to fall on the pencilled lines of the diamond. There are supposed to be seven drops, but she isn't going to stab herself again just to get them.

That done, Hermione stands back and reads the summoning incantation from the book.

"Lucius Malfoy, son of the morning," she murmurs. "Prince of darkness, bringer of light. I summon thee to my service, and I call thee by thy name."

She looks up expectantly. Crookshanks has jumped off her bed and is rubbing herself against her ankles, but apart from that there's been absolutely no change in her room.

With a resigned sigh, Hermione turns to switch the light back off. She knew it wouldn't work, but she can't quite suppress a twinge of disappointment. Time to go to sleep.

"There's no need to be so hasty, Miss Granger," a cultured male voice says from behind her. She whirls around, a scream getting choked off in her throat.

There's a man standing in the diamond on the floor.

Hermione's first, inane thought is that the devil looks like nothing like she expected him to. The man is tall and slender, but instead of being short and black his hair is long and white-blond, tied back in a queue like a Georgian aristocrat's. He's also dressed like one, in breeches, a ruffled shirt, and boots under a swirling black robe. His eyes are grey as storm clouds and twice as violent.

And he's handsome, of course. The devil always is.

She finds her voice after a few more moments of gaping, which he waits out patiently.

"You… are the devil, I presume," she says faintly.

He bows courteously. "Lucius Malfoy, in the flesh."

"Lucius?" she repeats. "I assumed the book had miswritten Lucifer. They – they say that's what your name is."

He shakes his head. "Oh, no. I'm afraid Lucifer is a miswriting of Lucius."

"Oh," she says. They fall into a silence, during which he seems content to stare pensively at her. Not knowing what else to do, she stares back. Her brain has been rendered temporarily blank.

"Do you know," he says suddenly, "that you are the first human to summon me in fifty years? I had thought my book to be lost."

"You mean _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_?" she asks. "I found it in my local library today and it… called to me somehow."

"Yes, it has a habit of doing that," he agrees. "Well, Miss Granger. What will you have of me?"

She decides not to read anything into the fact that the devil knows her name without being told. Sinking down to the floor, she settles herself in a cross-legged position. Her brain has begun to function again.

"The book says I'm entitled to a wish," she says.

"A single devil's favour," he says. "Encompassing anything on earth or hell – not that there's much difference nowadays." He laughs at his own joke. "Heaven, of course, is outside my remit, so no wishing for a glimpse of St Peter's Gates."

"But apart from that, I can wish for anything?" she says slowly.

He flashes her a sharp-toothed smile. "Anything at all."

A thousand and one desires pass through her head. Fame, money, a first-class degree…

"What's the catch?" she asks.

He spreads his hands wide. "There is no catch, beyond the fact that I am the devil and so everything is a catch."

"I've thought of a wish," she says. "I don't know if it's strictly within your power."

He looks curious. "What is it?"

She hesitates, then stands up and steps closer to him. Without crossing the barrier of the pencil lines, she murmurs one of her deepest desires into his ear. Hermione feels stupid once she's said it, but surprisingly enough, he isn't laughing at her. He merely looks thoughtful.

"That's an interesting thing to ask the devil for, Miss Granger," he says. "It does fall within my power, and I can grant it to you."

"What would the catch be for that particular wish?" she asks insistently.

He releases a silken chuckle. "It's too late to worry about that, for I've accepted your favour now and the deed is done. Go to sleep, Miss Granger."

She feels a belated twist of apprehension – she'd planned to find out more about the ramifications of her wish first, before allowing him to grant it, but he just went ahead and did it. Yet there's nothing to be done about that now. Already her eyelids are sliding shut of their own accord. She stumbles to her bed, nearly tripping over Crookshanks, who is regarding Lucius Malfoy with his large yellow eyes.

"Good gloaming," the devil says. The last thing Hermione is aware of before sleep overtakes her is him wrapping his cloak around himself and vanishing with a quiet pop.

* * *

**AN: Hi, old and new readers! Welcome to my new story, which is fully planned and I am SO excited about. There will be 13 chapters (including an epilogue) and I plan on them being fairly long chapters. I shouldn't really be starting this one before I've finished TKC, but there's only 2 chapters left on that one so I couldn't resist!**

**This chapter is dedicated to everyone from TKC who expressed an interest in this story. I love you all, and please let me know what you think of it so far! Oh, and what you think Hermione wished for...**


	2. II: The Devil's in the Details

**Chapter II: The Devil's in the Details**

_**(proverbial)**_

Hermione's alarm goes off at six a.m., just like it always does, holiday or not. She blinks awake. Since it's summer, her room is flooded with sunlight, gilding her bookcase and dresser.

There's a pit of excitement in her stomach. Why is there a pit of excitement in her stomach? It's Wednesday, which means today will be devoted to volunteering at her local GP's surgery with the nurse. Nothing exciting about that.

Then her eyes fall on _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_, sitting innocently on her bedside table, and the events of last night come back to her in a scalding rush.

She sits bolt upright in bed. Did that really happen? Did she really summon the devil and ask him for a favour?

No, of course not. She exhales a sigh of mingled disappointment and relief. Obviously it was some sort of fever dream, brought on by the stress of preparing her personal statement for university applications. It's a 4000-character statement in which the candidate has to make herself sound intelligent, appealing, and unique all at once; trying to write one is enough to drive anyone into a hallucination.

She prepares to start reading the _Financial Times_ on her phone as she does every morning before getting out of bed. But then she sees the faded lines of the diamond on her floor, illuminated by a patch of sunlight. The knowledge that last night's events were real presses into her bones, heavy as concrete, impossible to shake off.

Yes, it did really happen. She can't deny that.

Hermione stumbles through her daily morning ritual in a daze. Brushing her teeth, getting changed into jeans and a t-shirt, making cereal – she does all of it on autopilot. Her mind is whirring with possibilities.

There are a thousand and one ways her wish could go wrong, and only one way it could go right. She hadn't thought Lucius Malfoy would grant it so quickly, but, well. He _is_ the devil, after all.

At eight-thirty a.m. she sets out for the GP's surgery. She passed her driving test months ago, but the twenty-minute walk there is just short enough that there's no point in bringing her little Mini along. Most of the shops are beginning to open now. She passes two Co-ops, three restaurants, and a church on the way. The church is an odd one: it's called the Church of Hogwarts, and Hermione has never quite been able to ascertain precisely what denomination of Christianity they practise. It can't be a popular one. They don't advertise the saving powers of Jesus Christ on posters outside, or go knocking door-to-door, and she's never seen anyone outside.

Hermione's acquaintanceship with religion has always been rudimentary at best, but she supposes that now she knows the devil is real she ought to start looking into it more closely.

She arrives at the Montpellier Road Medical Practice just as the nurse is getting out of her car. "Ah, Hermione," Poppy Pomfrey says. "Good morning."

"Good morning," Hermione returns dutifully. She and Madam Pomfrey aren't precisely friendly, but the nurse respects her obvious intelligence and interest in learning. They've established a working relationship which might currently be the healthiest interaction in Hermione's life.

She enters the building, gaining a respite from the sunlight beating down mercilessly outside. The surgery is small – it's constituted largely by the waiting room, which has one long corridor attached to it like an ungainly limb. Down the corridor are doors belonging to the nurse's room and the three GPs' offices.

The waiting room is Hermione's least favourite part of the entire surgery. It's big but somehow airless, with uncomfortable green chairs arranged in a square around a central coffee table. There's nothing to read but NHS leaflets littered on the table and chairs. There's no television or children's toys. In fact, it's a little bit like she imagines purgatory must be like.

Only, purgatory probably doesn't have drop-dead beautiful boys like the one currently with his booted feet up on the coffee table.

He looks up as she passes through the waiting room, and Hermione feels her steps slow. He has a face like a fallen angel's: cruel yet lovely, straight-nosed and full-lipped, dominated by high cheekbones and implausibly silver eyes. His hair is closer to white than gold. Under its ruthless straightness, she can make out a single black stud glittering in his left ear.

She has never seen any human boy who looks like him.

But he is damn near the spitting image of Lucius Malfoy.

She freezes before him. "Who are you?"

He tilts his head back to look at her, smirking. He doesn't answer. Instead, Madam Pomfrey says, "Hermione, who are you talking to?"

She frowns at the nurse standing behind her. "I –"

The words die in her throat. With a slow wink, a gesture that is both sensuous and oddly threatening, the boy has disappeared.

"Nothing," she says weakly. "Nothing at all."

Madam Pomfrey looks at her askance but accepts her brushoff.

* * *

Since she's under eighteen and untrained her medical duties are obviously limited, but Hermione assists in basic things like preparing vaccinations for the nurse to inject. She's thankful for the task; without it, she knows she'd become consumed by thoughts of the boy in the waiting room. Who was he? He obviously has some sort of magical power. He disappeared the same way the devil did last night. Why was he here? Is Lucius Malfoy having her followed? The boy's resemblance to the devil is uncanny: she won't accept that there's no connection between them.

Today is the day all the new-born babies come in for their first jabs. Hermione has to deal with a steady stream of syringes and wailing infants, then with typing out the appointment notes Madam Pomfrey dictates. Her skin feels unbearably itchy the entire time. She keeps trying to scratch discreetly, but it does no good – she feels as though she'll come out of her skin if this keeps up much longer.

Finally it's lunchtime. She emerges from the nurse's room into the waiting room like a bear from hibernation, blinking as medical jargon dances before her eyes. She stops short as she sees what (or more accurately, who) is waiting for her.

The boy from this morning is back, and he's brought a friend. Sitting next to him is a frighteningly beautiful, skeletally thin young man with black hair and equally black eyes, stark against bone-white skin. He's idly ripping a square of tissue into tiny shreds which rain down on the floor.

The waiting room has filled up now with the hustle and bustle of minorly ill people, so it takes several moments before they notice her. The blond boy looks up first. He sees her watching and flashes her a vicious grin, his teeth as sharp and pointed as knives. Then he elbows the black-haired boy. They unfold themselves slowly, getting to their feet, and Hermione edges forward in the expectation that she's finally about to learn what's going on.

In the next moment, the blond boy has grown three-inch claws, which he uses to rip out his companion's slender throat.

The skin parts under his claws like butter. There's a spurt of blood which splashes all over the blond boy. Some of it gets on Hermione. The black-haired boy staggers backwards, collapsing back into his chair, and Hermione screams, tripping in her haste to back away. She keeps screaming, on and on. The patients who didn't look up when the violence was committed are looking at her now, mouths gaping, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Madam Pomfrey rushing towards her, yelling something she can't hear over the sound of her own terror.

Then everything stops.

Madam Pomfrey is frozen mid-stride and mid-sentence. Around Hermione, the other patients have been stilled in similar position. Her scream cuts off as though her own throat was cut while she gazes around in astounded horror. What the hell is going on?

The only movement in the entire waiting room comes from herself – and the two boys in front of her. Before her eyes, the black-haired boy's wound is stitching itself up, the skin knitting back together. Soon there's no sign of the fatal wound. In disbelief, she lifts her gaze to meet their faces.

"You know, if you hadn't shut up when you did, you would've been next on my hit list," the blond boy informs her. His voice is a low rasp, like he's smoked one too many cigarettes.

"Oh, my God," Hermione says feebly.

The other boy snickers. "No, darling. God has nothing to do with it." He extends a bloodstained hand in her direction. "Theodore Nott. Demon. Pleased to meet you."

She has no choice but to take it. Things seem to be coming at her as though from deep underwater, and she wonder detachedly if she's going into shock.

"Hermione Granger," she says.

"We know," the blond boy says. He holds out his own hand. When she takes it, expecting another handshake, she finds instead that he's bowing over it and his lips are brushing her knuckles. His flesh is cold as ice. She pulls back with a gasp, noting his dark grin at the movement.

"Draco Malfoy," he says. "At your service."

"Malfoy?" she repeats. "As in, Lucius Malfoy?"

"He's my father," he agrees.

She's incredulous. "Are you trying to tell me you're the devil's son? The devil has a son now?"

Theodore snorts. "You believed in the devil enough to summon him yesterday, why can't you believe he'd have a son?"

When he puts it like that, it does seem stupid. And she hates being stupid. She shakes herself a little, as though to throw off any hint of imbecility.

"Right," she says. "What are you doing here?"

"My father sent us," Draco says with a loose, catlike shrug. "He commanded us to watch over you for nights seven times seven."

She performs rapid mental calculations. "Forty-nine nights… the next month and a half? Why on earth would he do that?" A sudden thought occurs to her, and she flushes. "Did he – did he tell you what I wished for?"

"No," Theodore says, looking interestedly at her pink cheeks. "What did you wish for?"

"None of your business," she snaps.

Draco scowls. "Father won't tell me either. Can you _believe_ it? What's so special about her, anyway?"

"Draco's an only child, and his mummy and daddy give him everything," Theodore says to Hermione in a mock-conspiring tone. "This is the first time they're denying him something he really wants to know. We're all very intrigued."

Hermione can't help but be glad for that. The last thing she wants is for a couple of teenaged demon boys to know her silly little wish.

"So you don't know why Lucius ordered you to watch me," she says. "I don't suppose you have a choice in the matter?"

Draco shakes his head. "No-one defies Father. Not even me."

Hermione sighs. "Well, you're going to have a long forty-nine nights, then. I'm a very boring person. All I do at night is sleep." She ignores Draco's expression of exaggerated horror and Theodore's snigger. "What do you plan on doing while you're here on the human plane?"

"We'll think of something. The Mudblood world is quite an intriguing one," Theodore says. "All that electricity, and cars!"

Draco sneers. "Really, Theo? The Mudbloods only came up with all that because they don't have actual magic. It's nothing special."

"What's a Mudblood?" Hermione interjects.

"You," he says succinctly. "Humans."

"You have a special name for us?" In hindsight, it's unsurprising. The term sounds sinful when it's shaped by his voluptuous lips, but there's no mistaking how he makes it drip with derision. "What do demons call themselves then?" she asks eagerly.

"Purebloods," he says, looking at her. A slow, cunning smile is spreading across his face. "You're quite the academic, aren't you, Hermione?"

"I like knowing things," she admits. "Learning things. I have so many questions about demons…"

He flashes her a dazzling smile. "What if I give you the answers?"

She's immediately on her guard. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing," Draco says on a purr. "Nothing you haven't done before, at least. Just a little demon deal."

"I think I've had enough of deals recently," she says warily.

"This one practically doesn't even count," he protests. "It'll be a nothing deal. Practically free. In fact, if anything, it's disadvantaging _me_."

Her curiosity is piqued. "What are the terms, then?"

His eyes flare with triumph, but he stifles it before she can see. "Every night, I'll answer seven of your questions," he says. "And in return, you give me seven of your kisses. Nothing more, nothing less."

She hesitates. "Just kisses," she says. "Nothing more than my mouth on yours."

"Nothing more," he confirms smoothly.

She turns it over and over in her mind, but she can't see anything wrong with that. It's true she's never kissed anyone before, but he can hardly do much damage with a simple kiss. It's not like he's asked for her blood or tears, two elements which _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_ informs her are as integral to her as her name.

The pursuit of knowledge always was Hermione's greatest flaw.

"Deal," she says.

Draco doesn't bother to hide the triumph glittering in his eyes this time. Theodore lets out a low whistle.

"Interesting times we're living in," he comments.

Hermione rounds on him. "What do you mean?"

"You hardly need to concern yourself with that," Draco says smugly. "You can't back out of a demon deal. I own a little bit of your soul now, Hermione Granger, and do you know what? I'm not letting it go."

Her eyes narrow. "What do you mean, you own a little bit of my soul?"

"Didn't you know?" His voice goes high with faux amazement. "Someone really should have told you, you know! Once you enter a bargain you can't easily leave. Demon contract magic is one of the most powerful things in the three worlds, heaven, hell, and earth. The only thing we can't do for you is tell you the future. My father sees it, but he is forbidden to speak it."

She scoffs. Loudly. "Telling the future? Please." The future is mutable and ever-changing; not even the devil can know it.

Draco and Theodore exchange glances, and then the two burst into hysterical laughter. "She – doesn't – believe – in telling the future!" the latter gasps out in between his chuckles.

"This is going to be so fun," the former agrees, wiping a tar-black tear away. "Oh, hells, I needed that… Thanks for the laugh, Hermione."

She glowers at him. She hates being laughed at.

"When can I expect the two of you tonight?" she says stiffly.

Draco's grin turns wicked. "We'll appear in your bed tonight, Hermione. The witching hour. Wouldn't you like that?"

"That's fine," she says, refusing to be drawn in. "I'll be waiting up."

"Do it in something sexy," he advises, smirking. "I certainly will." With that, he's gone, leaving behind him the smell of smoke.

"You'll have to forgive Draco," Theodore says, looking as though he's biting back his own smile. "He is a demon, after all. We both are." He flicks his wrist. In a moment, the drying blood from when Draco slit his throat has vanished, and when Hermione glances at the waiting room clock she sees it's been reset to two minutes before the entire incident occurred. Then he's popped out himself.

The room unfreezes collectively around her. Hermione watches in stunned fascination as people unwind themselves and go back to their chatter, unaware that for a few minutes they were taken out of time. Theodore seems to have wiped their memories too, because nobody asks her why she was screaming.

It seems she has a demon date for tonight. Obviously, she won't be wearing 'something sexy.' For one, she doesn't possess anything that fits the description. For another, Draco was obviously joking. He's a demon, as Theodore pointed out: it's in his nature to be lascivious. He can't help it. It doesn't mean anything.

Unfortunately.

* * *

**AN: For the foreseeable future, I've been updating every day :O Believe me, I'm just as shocked as you! This chapter is dedicated to ofunnemordi2, the first person to review the last chapter. As always, here's your daily reminder that I love hearing what you think of the story!**

**I should probably make it clear that this story is not intended to be religious at all. **


	3. III: Hell is Other People

**Chapter III: Hell is Other People**

_**(Jean Paul Sartre – **_**No Exit**_**)**_

The rest of her day at the surgery passes without incident. The constant flow of babies weakens after lunch, and Hermione spends the next hew hours disinfecting surfaces and typing out the ever-present appointment notes.

She gets to go home at five p.m. With a curt goodbye to Madam Pomfrey, she hitches her bag up higher on her shoulder and exits the building.

The morning's vicious sunlight has mellowed into a cooler, but still blinding, yellow haze. Hermione is walking directly into it; she squints and shades her eyes with her hand.

"Ow!"

She wasn't paying enough attention to where she was stepping. Her feet tangle themselves up. She goes down heavily, breaking her fall with her palms and knees, hissing as they're scraped raw by the pavement. Pain shoots up her arms and calves.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

"Are you alright?"

She staggers to her feet. Another boy, the third of the day, is standing before her. How odd. She doesn't think she's spoken to as many boys in her entire life as she has today. Unlike the demon boys, this one looks refreshingly normal: he's of medium height, with a compact body and untidy mop of black hair. She has the odd sensation of falling as she looks into his brilliant green eyes, shielded by a pair of glasses, but then she blinks and she's herself again.

"Yes, thank you," she says with a perfunctory smile. This is London; stranger interaction is to be avoided at all costs. She's already turning to go.

"No, you aren't," the boy says accusingly. "Look at your hands!"

She does. Blood is dripping down her wrists. Odd. She hadn't thought she'd hurt herself that badly.

"Come on in and let me put a plaster on that," he insists.

"In?" she repeats, frowning. Surely he doesn't expect her to enter the house of a male she's just met.

In response, he jerks his head at the nearest building. Hermione gazes up at the unassuming red brickwork of the Church of Hogwarts, nestled in between a Sainsbury's and a fish-and-chip shop.

"Only in there," he says. "We've plenty of first-aid things."

She'd turn him down, but the blood is annoying. And it's only a church, it's not like it's his house. She finally nods and follows him through the door.

Inside, the church looks… remarkably churchlike. The entire building is a single room, with padded wooden chairs laid out in pews and a low table at the front with a candle burning on it. There are no crosses, religious imagery, or people. From the ceiling hangs a tattered banner on which is printed a Latin motto: _draco dormiens numquam titillandus_. Hermione knows Latin, of course, she got an A* in it at GCSE and it's one of the five A-levels she's studying now. She translates it easily inside her head – _never tickle a sleeping dragon_. She's amused by the coincidence of encountering another 'draco' again so soon, and the aptness of the warning to her own life.

On one whitewashed wall Hermione can see a portrait of an old, whitehaired man with a long beard and clear blue eyes; at first she wonders if that's supposed to be one of the Apostles, but the name inscribed under the frame reads _Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore_. Must be the church founder. His eyes seem to track her movements across the room.

"Take a seat," the boy says, indicating the pews. "I'll be right back with the plaster."

She does. There was a staircase right at the back of the church which she didn't initially notice. The boy disappears up it, reappearing moments later with a little tan plaster held between his fingers.

"So, I'm Harry Potter," he offers as he holds out the plaster.

"Hermione Granger," she says, taking it. Their fingers overlap momentarily. The touch makes the tiny hairs on her arms stand upright: she pulls away instantly. As she does so her gaze falls on a flash of colour at the side of his pale, skinny wrist. She sees the curl of a letter around the jut of his wrist-bone.

"You have a tattoo?" she asks, her interest caught. "What does it say?" She's never been able to resist reading whatever comes to hand.

To her surprise, a light flush works its way up his cheeks. "Oh, it's pretty silly," he says with a rueful smile. But he turns his arm anyway so that she can see. Circling his wrist like a handcuff is a quotation in inky Gothic letters: _Hell is other people_.

"It's from –"

"Sartre, I know," she says. "His play _No Exit_. A little bit of a strange tattoo for a boy who spends his time in a church, isn't it?"

He laughs, seemingly unoffended. "I guess you could say it's sort of a family motto," he says. "My parents used to say it a lot. Aren't you going to put that plaster on?"

She realises she was just holding it. "Sorry. Thanks for the plaster," she says briefly. Her blood has traced tiny rivulets down the insides of her arms. She puts the plaster across the worst graze on her right palm, which bore the brunt of stopping her fall.

"Well, I'd better be going," she says. "Goodbye, Harry."

"See you, Hermione," he says, watching her leave.

She'd better research the beliefs of Hogwarts Church in more depth, Hermione thinks as she turns down her street. Seems like an interesting place with an interesting take on the afterlife.

She swings her gate open and then stops dead.

"_Crookshanks_?"

There's a dark, squashed lump on the doorstep which seems to be her cat. But it can't possibly be her cat. Because it's missing its head.

Spots dance dizzily before her eyes as she barrels towards her front door. The dark lump is lying in a pool of dark ruby blood, and she sees – she sees –

She sees Crookshanks licking himself calmly, looking up at her with inscrutable yellow eyes as she freezes in front of him. Her head is pounding with confusion. There's no blood, no battered body. A perfectly healthy and normal-looking cat is cleaning itself delicately on the welcome mat.

Hermione lets out a broken exhale. Her mind must still be playing tricks on her. She's clearly still being affected by all the things Draco and Theodore put her through this morning.

She swings Crookshanks into her arms just to reassure herself. He's a warm, solid weight, and finally the tension begins to drain out of her. Bloody hell.

Her appetite is gone, but her parents are waiting in the dining room to have dinner with her. She has no choice but to go in.

"Hello, Mummy. Daddy," she greets.

The Drs Granger are busy laying the table. Tonight's dinner is avocado sandwiches.

"Hermione, there you are," her mother says. "You're back late. I was just about to give you a ring."

She holds up her plastered hand. "A little fall, Mummy. Nothing to worry about."

"Yes, yes, you'll be perfectly fine," her father says with a cursory glance at it. He would say the same thing if a bone were sticking out of her arm; the Drs Granger don't believe in indulging hypochondria.

They begin eating. Immediately, her father opens the conversation with the expected question.

"How's your personal statement going?" he enquires. "Still stuck on how to conclude it?"

"Unfortunately, yes," she admits tonelessly. "At this point I'm almost tempted to just use some sort of quotation and leave it at that."

Her mother gasps in horror, as though she's just suggested abandoning a medical career for cabaret dancing.

"You can't possible do that!" she exclaims. "Universities hate it. It's so unoriginal!"

"I know, Mummy," Hermione sighs. "I wouldn't really, don't worry."

Her father dabs delicately at his mouth with a napkin. "That Watson-Hillier girl is going in for Classics," he says with distaste. "Of course, I told her father what a waste of time and money that would be, because she'll never find a job."

Hermione's mother sniffs. "More money than sense, those people," she says. "I'll be surprised if Clarissa makes it into Newcastle, let alone Oxford. What did she get for her GCSEs again, Hermione?"

"Four A*s and six As," she supplies emotionlessly.

"You see?" her mother says, vindicated. "If Oxford takes that they aren't the university I thought they were!"

The rest of dinner passes similarly. Hermione's parents are comfortably middle-class, but they don't have inherited wealth: her maternal great-grandparents were Welsh coal miners. As such, her parents are intensely insecure about their place in society, and they view Hermione's impending medical career as the pinnacle of the Granger family's achievements. She shudders at the thought of how they'd have reacted if she'd said she wanted to study some ridiculous arts discipline like Classics.

Her parents won't be able to rest easily until she's secured her medicine place at Cambridge. Since they won't know whether she's made it or not until next January, and it's only July right now, it's going to be a long wait.

After dinner she goes upstairs to work on her personal statement. As in most areas of her life, she's way ahead of her classmates here. The deadline for the application is the fifteenth of October, and she's already on the fifth draft of her statement. But there's one glaring omission: a concluding paragraph.

She hunches over her laptop, staring grimly at the Word document, cudgelling her brains for something witty to end with. It's no use. Everything she's coming up with feels stale and unimpressive.

Why does she want to be a doctor? She can't say it's because she wants to help people; for one, it's so clichéd universities loathe it, and for another it isn't true. But she can't say she's attracted by the prospect of an immense salary and guaranteed job with the NHS. That sort of mercenary thing wouldn't go down well.

Realistically, she's applying for medicine because her parents want her to, and because she can't think of any other subject she'd rather do. Hermione prizes all knowledge equally.

She abandons the attempt for the moment and wanders over to her bookcase. The books are sorted neatly by height, then author surname, then publisher. She considers rereading _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_, but she's already read it cover-to-cover twice, and it's not like there'll be any tips on how to escape a deal with the devil.

First, she doesn't want to escape it. He hasn't even granted her wish yet. Second, if Draco is to be believed, there isn't any way to escape it anyway.

She snorts. As if a demon – and the devil's own son, no less – is to be believed. He must lie like he breathes. Just as he did when he said that his father knows the future, or claimed to own a fraction of her soul. What even is a soul, anyway? How can a mere word transfer it from her ownership to his?

No, he was definitely just trying to scare her. He looked like the sort of boy who'd enjoy terrorising other people. Besides, _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_ even warns her that demons twist truth and tell stories until up is down and white is black.

She pulls out her Oxford World Classics edition of John Milton's _Paradise Lost_ from the shelf, complete with an agonisingly ugly illustration of God on the front cover.

_Of Man's first Disobedience, and the Fruit_

_Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste_

_Brought Death into the world, and all our woe…_

Perfect.

* * *

**AN: As promised: your daily update! Sorry it's a little shorter than usual, but I'm over halfway through the next chapter so I'm hoping to get that up tonight as well (though I make no promises). I do work hard on this so as ever, please review!**

**This chapter is dedicated firstly to Vane3131, and secondly to all the guest reviewers who leave comments I can't personally reply to. I love and appreciate them all!**


	4. IV: Hell is Empty

**Chapter IV: Hell is Empty and All the Devils are Here**

**(_William Shakespeare_ – The Tempest)**

As soon as the digits on Hermione's phone flicker over into 00:00, there's a muted popping sound and two demon boys appear in her bed.

"Hello," she says calmly from the chair at her desk.

Draco swivels on the bed to face her, mock pouting. "Aw, Hermione," he says. "You shouldn't have dressed up for us. Now I feel so… underdressed."

Underdressed is certainly one way of putting it. The devil's son is shirtless, leaving on display an expanse of alabaster-pale chest that's corded with lean, sleek muscles. His every movement is languid yet somehow tense with restrained violence; in fact, he's rather like a very big cat. Hermione is disconcerted to see that he's wearing a pair of black leather breeches which hug his thighs like a second skin, along with high leather boots. What odd clothing.

"What happened to wearing something sexy?" Theodore complains mildly. Unlike Draco, he's fully dressed, but his raiment isn't any more normal than his companion's: he's paired a top hat with a striped waistcoat and ripped jeans.

"I don't own anything sexy," Hermione explains.

"A shame," Draco murmurs. His eyes travel slowly over her body. She can feel the searing heat of his gaze through her thick polka-dotted nightshirt and loose trousers; her clothing doesn't seem to be any sort of barrier at all when it comes to him, because it's as though he can see straight through to the skin underneath.

To distract herself from that thought, she hurriedly asks a question. It's her first mistake.

"Is fashion in Hell always so… eclectic?" Hermione says.

Draco's eyes light up. "Is that the first question for tonight?"

She balks. "No! Don't answer that then. I was just curious."

He lets out a whip-sharp curl of laughter. "You're going to have to be more careful, Hermione. Don't ever give a demon an opening. Haven't you heard the saying 'curiosity killed the cat'?"

"Yes, and I've also heard that satisfaction brought it back," she returns tartly. From her desk, she extracts a Moleskine notebook and flips to the latest page. "Okay, so. I've made a numbered list of all the questions I want answered."

"I'm all ears," Draco says lazily. He sprawls back in her bed, arms crossed behind his head. She tries not to look too closely at the smooth hairlessness of his chest (marred only by a thin, golden, unbearably tempting line which arrows under his waistband). Instead she focuses on Theodore, who's moved to sit sedately on the edge of her bed.

"Question one. Why does the devil have a surname that's French, of all things?"

Although she's looking at Theodore, it's Draco who responds.

"That's just the way it is," he says. "Wonderful surname, isn't it? Malfoy. _Bad faith_. The House of Malfoy has been ruling Hell for an eternity and a half, and we'll continue ruling it even after the end of death itself. You'll find that the Sacred Twenty-Eight – that is, the twenty-eight pureblood demon families of Hell – all proclaim their roots proudly. My mother, for instance, is of the House of Black, and her father Cygnus was a High Lord of Hell."

"Black? Really? What an unoriginal name for a demon," Hermione says drily, but they both know her snark is only a cover. She's forgotten her earlier aversion to looking at him; now she's devouring him with her stare. Her eyes are bright and her cheeks flushed with the rush of excitement she always gets when new knowledge opens itself up to her, like a present unwrapping itself. She's even leaning forward in her chair with anticipation. With her bushy dark brown hair, unremarkable skin, and brown eyes, she is not a beautiful girl, or even a passably pretty girl. Yet right now her face is suffused with so much pleasure that it almost overcomes her plainness.

Draco has noticed.

"So you mentioned your mother and grandfather," she says eagerly. "Here's my second question: tell me more about your family!"

"That's technically not a question," Theodore says. They both ignore him. In the next moment, he hunches over with a wince that Hermione doesn't notice, but Theodore gets the hint.

"Fine, fine, sorry," he mutters in a tone too low for human ears to catch. "I'll just shut up then and let you get on with it, shall I?"

"You already know my father's name. My mother is Narcissa Black," Draco is telling Hermione, whose expression of dawning wonder is similar to that of someone tasting chocolate for the first time. His eyes are fixed unblinkingly to her face. "The Houses of Black and Malfoy are the two greatest and most powerful dynasties in Hell. Obviously, I'm a pure-blooded demon. So is Theo here – he's from the House of Nott. We're of the full blood, but it's possible for half-bloods to exist. Half-bloods," he says with scorn, "are the product of unions between demons and humans, and they're really nothing more than glorified humans; they can do magic if they try very hard, but they have only a fraction of our powers. They're quite common. In fact, there's even one living not too far from you."

"I wish I were a half-blood," Hermione says enviously. "Imagine being able to do magic…"

She's unconscious of the wistful tinge softening her voice. Theodore shakes his head.

"Honestly, Hermione, you've already come as close as any Mudblood ever could," he says, not unkindly. "You've made two demon deals. One's with the devil, whom no Mudblood has managed to summon for fifty years, and one's with his son. That's truly impressive."

"I suppose so," she says unenthusiastically. "But I'd still take being even half a demon over being fully human. Third question: who's the half-blood you said lives near me?"

She is being engulfed by a sneaking suspicion. In her mind, she sees the image of a bespectacled boy with eyes like unreality and a remarkable family motto. She's not surprised when Theodore lets out a bark of laughter.

"It's Potter, Harry Potter," he says, with a cruel smile aimed in Draco's direction. "Draco absolutely can't stand him."

"He's just such a hypocrite," Draco snarls, jack-knifing up in Hermione's bed. She can feel the force of his rage all the way over from her desk; it makes the blood dance in her veins and spices the air with danger. "The Potters were damn near as pure as anyone in Hell, and then his father James Potter turned into a blood traitor and ran off with his Mudblood whore… now Potter likes to prance around the Mudblood world, pretending he isn't a bloody half-blood, like the treacherous little do-gooder he is." He rakes his hand viciously through his hair, silver eyes glowing.

Wow. Hermione is glad she's not Harry Potter. She thinks back to his tattoo, and lets out a tiny snort of laughter. That Sartre quotation takes on extra irony if you've been to actual Hell.

"I've heard of a Harry Potter who hangs around the Church of Hogwarts on St George's Avenue," she says with carefully studied unconcern. "That's run by Albus Dumbledore, isn't it? Where do Dumbledore and Hogwarts come into this whole thing?"

"That's two questions," Draco says, viciously pleased.

Hermione is immediately indignant. "No! One of those was a rhetorical question! I'm not having that!"

"I'm afraid you haven't a choice in the matter, my pet," he says mockingly. "I did warn you to be careful…"

"Ugh. Fine. Just answer then!" She finishes with a little catlike hiss of frustration.

"That was a surprisingly hot sound you just made," he comments, his eyebrows raising. "Can you do it again? It makes my dick hard."

She simmers in embarrassed irritation, doing her best to ignore the very prominent evidence of his statement. He laughs, delighted, before taking pity on her.

"So, answers four and five. The Church of Hogwarts was founded by a blood traitor named Dumbledore," he explains. "Blood traitor – that means a pureblood who's turned his back on his people and is putting the benefit of Mudbloods above the benefit of demons. His so-called church isn't a church at all. It's a secret organisation of demon hunters, dedicated to stamping out people like me. They call themselves the Order of the Phoenix. Their entire purpose is hunting down and killing demons." He sees her open her mouth. "No, I am not going to tell you how they manage to kill demons," he says, rolling his eyes. "Do I look like an idiot to you?"

"Yes," she says snidely.

"Ha ha," he deadpans. Her expression of barely contained eagerness has not escaped him. "You'd better not be getting any ideas, Hermione," he adds warningly. "Like Theo said, because of the deals you've made, you're the closest thing a Mudblood can get to a pureblood and they'll consider you an enemy just like they do demons. If the Order ever discovers you belong to me, you'll be dead before you can blink those pretty little eyes at them."

"I'm not getting any ideas!" she defends herself. Then she remembers which statement she ought to be objecting to first. "And I don't belong to you!"

He only smirks, settling himself more comfortably on her mattress. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much," he drawls. The remark is directed at Theodore, which gives Hermione a visible jolt; she'd forgotten he was even in the room. He's slid off her bed and is sitting cross-legged on her floor beside it, spinning a silver ring around one finger.

Hermione cuts in before Theodore can respond. "I'm really tired now," she says. It's a lie: the exhilaration of new knowledge is still burning in her blood. But she's remembered that this knowledge comes at a price.

"You still have two questions left," Theodore points out silkily from the floor.

"I'll take them tomorrow," she says quickly. She takes a deep breath and faces Draco, who is regarding her with lazy amusement. "How… how would you like your five kisses? I can give them to you now, or…" she trails off hesitantly.

"Don't worry about that now, my pet," he says. "I shall be collecting them later." He pauses ominously. "There will be interest."

"No there won't," she says instantly. "We agreed, a kiss per question. Nothing more and nothing less."

"Alas, as clever as she is beautiful," Draco sighs, shaking his head at Theodore. "What a misfortune for me!"

Theodore is laughing, but Hermione crimsons. She knows she is clever but she has never been called beautiful; in fact, she isn't being called beautiful now, is she? Not by a demon whose every word is touched with mockery. She glares furiously to cover her confusion.

"I said, I'm tired," she growls. "Go away now, alright?"

For a moment, it looks as though Draco will not move, and her breath catches with a combination of ire and anticipation. But finally he releases an exaggerated sigh and rolls out of her bed.

"One day," he says, "you'll be begging me to bring you to bed, not leave it. But today is not that day. Sweet dreams, Hermione." He grabs onto Theodore, tugging him up. The two of them turn on their heels and teleport out.

With their departure, it feels as though all the air has rushed back into the room. Hermione takes a huge gulp of precious oxygen and slowly moseys over to her bed. Her head is spinning with all the new information her brain has just absorbed. It's also spinning with something else: an inkling of the same dark tendril of insatiable curiosity which first urged her to pick up _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_ and changed the course of her life.

But she quickly shelves that thought. There'll be time enough for that tomorrow.

She slips under the covers. Her bed smells of smoke and ashes, like roses, lust and lies. Hermione allows herself one deep inhale of Draco Malfoy's scent before she resolutely pushes it away and forces herself to go to sleep.

* * *

**AN: Here's your second update of tonight! Enjoy. Dedicated to .cheng for being lovely. **

**I've been updating one story or another daily for almost a week now, and I have to say, I'm not sure how much longer I can do it... I love writing, and sharing it with you all, but I don't really get many reviews per chapter (compared to the huge number of people I can see reading). Since I never want to be one of those people who insists on a minimum number of reviews before updating, I do wonder if my chapters would benefit from being a bit more spaced out. If you're reading this, and you're someone who's favourited/followed but not reviewed, please consider dropping me a sentence or two! I really hope I don't sound mercenary about this. Thank you for understanding!**


	5. V: If I Cannot Move Heaven

**Chapter V: If I Cannot Move Heaven, I will Raise Hell**

**(_Virgil_ – Aeneid)**

Hermione wakes up the next morning in a tangle of bedsheets, her skin slicked with sweat and the place between her thighs shockingly damp.

For an incredulous moment she wonders if she's wet herself, but no. Not even she is that naïve.

She knows exactly why she's so wet. She spent the entire night trapped in intensely vivid, painfully erotic dreams of Draco Malfoy – dreams of his mouth on hers, her mouth on him, his fingers (and more) in her. For a girl who has never, ever had a wet dream in all of her seventeen years, it's a little bit unexpected.

It figures that the only boy who's ever turned her on would be a demon.

She considers the possibility that Draco is some sort of incubus who's placed a lust spell on her. But she doesn't think that's the case. For one, now that she's awake, she feels a lot more clear-headed about him, and surely a lust spell wouldn't have dissipated so quickly. For another, while she'd have to be blind not to consider him attractive, she isn't _attracted_ to him. She can't be. He wields his sexuality like a weapon, not an asset.

With clinical detachment she considers masturbating to ease the ache. But it's 6.05 a.m., and she's already lost five minutes from her allotted half-an-hour to read the _Financial Times_. Hermione hates unplanned variations to her routine. Her brain will just have to overcome her body and push all of that desire right away.

Immersing herself in a highly technical article on the Federal rate cuts soon cures her. Pleased at the restoration of her equilibrium – there's nothing Hermione hates more than hormones and emotions – she turns her mind to the question of all the knowledge she gained last night.

She suspects she can discard Draco's grandiose claims of owning her. Surely she'd feel it if she were under the control of someone other than herself. When he speaks, she doesn't feel the urge to obey him, nor does she feel particularly attuned or inclined to him.

Besides, she'd already made a deal with another demon before him: his father. Can a soul belong to three people at once?

It seems unlikely, but no possibility can be ruled out. She could always ask Draco. He would tell her…but then another of her precious questions would be gone. She's still smarting over the loss of the rhetorical question last night. She needs to do better if she's going to be hanging out with the devil's son.

Fortunately, another source of information has opened itself up to her.

Hermione feels a frisson of combined fear and anticipation roll up her spine as she remembers that she still owes him five kisses. Obviously, she has never kissed anyone before, and she can't quite believe that there exists an individual who seems to actively _want_ to kiss her. He probably only wants the experience of being with a Mudblood – although he was contemptuous enough of them yesterday that it seems odd.

Still, hypocrisy must surely be the least of a demon's flaws. Maybe that's all there is to his interest: a drive to gain new knowledge, specifically of what it's like to kiss a human. This drive is probably the one motivator in the entire universe Hermione truly understands, since it's more or less the same reason why she even gets up in the mornings. She can hardly deny someone else their own attempt at acquiring a new experience.

On the other hand, although Hermione agreed to Draco's deal because she sees absolutely no way it can hurt her, she'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to his motives. Hence her intended destination today.

It's Thursday, a day earmarked in her diary for rereading the medical books she mentions in her personal statement. It won't do to be tripped up in her interviews by being quizzed on a text she hasn't read for two years. But despite this very important task, after breakfast she finds herself wandering down the cracked pavement of St George's Avenue.

She hesitates as her feet falter outside the unprepossessing façade of the Church of Hogwarts. Doubts are beginning to curdle inside her. Is she making a terrible mistake? Draco warned her that, if the Order of the Phoenix finds out about her deals, they'll kill her. He's a liar. But that doesn't mean it isn't the truth.

Yet she can't stop now. Now that she knows there's a _demon-hunting organisation_, of all things, a scant half-mile from her front door, she can't just go placidly back to her mundane life like it isn't even there. That would drive her insane. It's bad enough to be a human in the demon world; worse to be a human who acts like the demon world doesn't exist, with its intricacies and mysteries she hasn't even begun to get to the bottom of yet.

Filled with fresh resolve, she walks into the church.

An odd sensation flickers over her skin as she passes the threshold. It feels a bit like a giant fan has just sprayed water all over her. They do that in the streets of Saudi Arabia, when it's pushing forty-five degrees in the height of summer: set up giant fans and let them pump out a fine cooling mist. That's what it feels like has just happened to her.

But her skin is dry, and as she clears the doorway the sensation vanishes.

The church looks subtly different. It takes Hermione a moment to work out why. The table on the far side which had only a single candle on it yesterday is now full of them, tall waxy red tapers crowding and jostling each other for space on its surface. Yesterday she'd have assumed it was for a religious service. Today she wonders if it's part of the mysterious demon-killing ritual Draco refused to tell her about.

Stupid Draco. It would've been safe to tell her; Hermione's no murderer. Probably.

Dumbledore's painted eyes follow her as she makes her way to the pews, which are empty apart from the very person she wanted to see. What a lovely coincidence.

Harry Potter is sitting alone in the middle of a pew with his head bowed, shoulders hunched inwards. Hermione cautiously slides in next to him and waits for him to look up. He does so a moment later.

"Hermione!" He smiles, eyes crinkling behind his glasses. "It's great to see you again."

"You too," she says. Her voice is a little rough; she's never been good at social interactions. At least not with other humans. Draco seems to have been a different story.

"I hope I haven't interrupted your…praying," she says awkwardly.

He shrugs easily. "It's alright. I was done anyway. How's your hand?"

She looks down at the raw, healing skin of her palms. "Fine, thank you. It doesn't really hurt any more. I appreciate the plaster."

"Well, I'd like to be a doctor someday, so thanks for letting me practise on you," he says, grinning.

She blinks. "Me too! Which universities are you applying to?" It occurs to her that this is jumping the gun a little bit. "Um – how old are you?"

"Seventeen, just going into Year Thirteen," he says. "You?"

"Same here," she says eagerly. The purpose of her visit has momentarily been driven out of her mind by the prospect of finding a kindred spirit, one who can empathise with her over the intense stress and countless drafts that is the UCAS application cycle. "Which school do you go to?"

"You probably won't have heard of it, it's pretty far from here," he says evasively.

An answer that indirect probably means his school is a comprehensive. Hermione is jolted by the memory of the last time she spoke to someone from a comprehensive: a girl on the Tube who called her a posh bitch when Hermione unwisely answered her enquiry as to which school she goes to.

It's true she's hopelessly middle-class and she takes knowledge for granted. But she isn't _trying_ to be those things. She just doesn't know any other way to be than herself.

The recollection of the emotions she felt on that occasion – the embarrassment as other passengers stared and whispered, the feeling of exclusion, her awareness that she can't even commiserate with her classmates because they loathe her know-it-all behaviour too – rises up inside her, reminding of her purpose. She didn't come here to swap sixth-form horror stories with a half-blood demon boy. She came here to use him.

Before he can ask her the reciprocal question about where she goes, Hermione indicates the table of candles. "Quite the ritual you have going on there," she says. "Some sort of sacrifice of candles?"

He laughs at her joke, but it sounds forced. "We are a church, after all," he says. "Candles and churches are sort of like bread and butter, aren't they?"

He waits a beat for her to respond. She doesn't. A careful guardedness begins to creep into his expression.

"Can I help you, Hermione?" he asks. "I mean, I assume you didn't come into the church this morning because you'd like to repair your relationship with Jesus."

His relationship with Jesus can't any better than hers is, considering he's half a bloody demon, but Hermione ignores his second sentence in favour of answering his question.

"I'm… curious," she says honestly. "About what you do here. What exactly is it you believe in? What are your teachings? For that matter, where are your parishioners and priests? It's only ever been you, which you have to admit is a little bit strange..."

She breaks off. She hadn't intended to say quite so much, but something about the way Harry is watching her, head tilted to the side, made the words come pouring out. She compresses her lips together.

"Wait there," he says suddenly. "Wait there just one moment."

He gets up and runs to the staircase at the back of the room, the one which leads up to parts unknown. Hermione looks bemusedly after him. What's going on now?

He's gone for what feels like an interminably long period of time, even though the Always On display of her Samsung phone tells her it was only three minutes. When he returns he's smiling.

"Yes," he says simply.

"Yes?" she echoes. "Yes what?"

"You," he tells her, "are going to get all of your questions answered, if you come along to the church at eight tonight."

For a moment she thinks she must have misheard him. All her questions answered? Really? That seems… suspiciously easy. She wasn't expecting quite so much out of her foray here today; she'd expected to have to work up to anything serious.

Then his words penetrate. She shakes her head. "I can't leave the house at eight. There's no way my parents will let me."

He looks faintly astonished, as though the concept of strict parents is a novel one. Hermione feels resentful. She knows she's far more cloistered than other teenagers her age, with their parties and drugs and boyfriends. It's not that she necessarily wants those things, but she couldn't have them even if she wanted to anyway.

"Why don't you tell your parents you're having a sleepover with a friend, then come here?" Harry suggests.

"I don't have any friends," she says, so bluntly and forcefully that he blinks.

"Well," he says, "maybe I can fix that. Let me call someone over. I think you'll like her."

He fishes his phone out of his jeans pocket and dials a number. She suspects he was on the phone when he vanished a few minutes ago, as well, but this time he stays out in the open and lets her hear his side of the conversation.

"Hi?...Yeah, hey, Gin…Can you come over to the church? There's someone I want you to meet… Awesome, thanks. See you in a bit."

He hangs up and grins at her. "She's on her way."

They don't have to wait for long. A few minutes later the door to the church swings open, and in stalks the most beautiful girl Hermione has ever seen.

She's tall and slim, her stride slinky like a jaguar's, her hair a long wine-red curtain that streams down to her waist. She has porcelain skin that looks as though it has never encountered the sun, and when she takes off her sunglasses Hermione sees that her eyes are brown. But not brown like her own. This brown isn't muddy: it's moonlight on amber, ringed with gold.

"Hi," she says, smiling at Hermione. Her teeth are just a little too sharp for comfort. "I'm Ginevra Weasley. You can call me Ginny."

"Hermione," she says automatically.

"Hermione, this is my girlfriend," Harry interjects, standing and going to wrap his arm loosely around the girl's waist. She leans into his side like a cat. "I was thinking maybe you could tell your parents you're staying with Ginny tonight?"

"What?" Hermione says incredulously. "Um, I don't – that is –"

"Don't worry, Hermione," Ginny says with a smirk. "I don't bite."

"No, of course not, but –"

She can't voice her real concern. _Have you figured out I'm a demon-bound human? Is this an elaborate plot to lure me to your house and kill me? Why else would you actually be willing to give me answers?_

No, that's silly. If they wanted to kill her, Harry's had ample time to do it all morning. If she wants answers, she's going to have to take risks. Christopher Columbus didn't discover America by staying safely tucked up at home.

"I'm just… a little uncomfortable around strangers," she says, which is true. "Sorry. I'd really like to stay with you tonight, if you'll have me."

"Of course we will," Ginny says. "Though I do have six older brothers, so you may regret your arrival… Here, take my number!"

They swap contact details, then Hermione announces that she'd better be going and rushes home.

She's deeply torn. On one hand, she desperately wants to go; Harry promised her answers, and she gets the feeling that he's a man of his word. These answers are even unattached to strings, unlike Draco's.

But on the other hand… there are Draco and Theodore. They'll be appearing in her bedroom at midnight again tonight, just as Lucius commanded them to. There's another mystery there. Why would the devil order them to do that? Does it have something to do with her wish? She can't tell whether or not she hopes so.

She doesn't know when this eight p.m. appointment will be over, but she needs to be back in her own house by midnight. She can't risk them catching her in the house of the Weasleys. If the Church of Hogwarts is a front for the demon-hunting Order of the Phoenix, and Ginny is attached to Harry who's attached to the church, it's a fair guess that she's mixed up with the Order as well. Draco definitely does not need to find out about Hermione's actions today.

* * *

It feels like an eternity before the clock ticks over into six p.m. and she finally hears her parents' key in the lock. Immediately she throws down Adam Kay's _This Is Going to Hurt_ and flings herself downstairs.

"Mummy, Daddy," she says. "Had a good day at work?"

She nods through her mother's graphic description of a root canal and waits for an opportune break in the conversation. She needs to pick her moment. She has never, ever asked for something like this before.

No, that's a lie. When she was eleven she asked her parents if she could go to the birthday party of a prep school classmate who'd announced a class-wide invitation. It seems he hadn't had her in mind when he extended it, because when she showed up with her present he had her ejected ignominiously.

"Mummy," she says, taking a deep breath. "Can I go to a sleepover tonight?"

Her mother freezes with a forkful of spaghetti Bolognese halfway to her mouth. "A sleepover?" she repeats, as though she has never encountered the concept before. "With who?"

"Ginny Weasley," she says, as steadily as possible. "I met her today when I went out for a walk this morning."

"I've never heard of a Weasley," her father says in suspicion. "You can't possibly spend the night at the house of someone you met on the streets today!"

Hermione begins to sweat. She needs to be at that church tonight.

"Ginny goes to Westminster School," she lies. "We have some mutual friends."

Her parents appear slightly more mollified. "It's very irregular," her mother says. "Why can't you wait to have a sleepover until we've actually met her? You've never been on one before."

No, no, it needs to be tonight. Hermione shakes her head. "Please, Mummy. I'd prefer it to be tonight. You know I have no volunteering commitments on Fridays."

Her parents exchange glances. "Let's talk to the girl first, then we'll see," her father says at last.

Hermione rings Ginny, restraining herself from jiggling her leg up and down with nervous energy as she waits for the call to connect.

"Yeah?" Ginny drawls when she picks up.

"It's Hermione," she says into the phone. "My parents were just wondering if they could speak to you before I come over?"

There's a surprised pause. Hermione, reviewing her words, cringes with humiliation. She sounds like she's seven, not seventeen.

"Sure," Ginny says at last. "Hand the phone over."

Hermione does so. Her mother makes pleasantries with Ginny on the loudspeaker so her father can hear as well, asking innocuous questions which are really designed to ferret out whether or not she's a secret serial killer. _How old are you? What does your father do?_

Sixteen, and he's a civil servant in Whitehall. Her parents like the sound of that.

But then comes the dreaded question. "Hermione tells me you go to Westminster, is that right?" her mother says.

Hermione holds her breath, but Ginny takes it in stride. "Oh yes," she says smoothly. "Just waiting on my GCSE results, of course, but I have a place there for the sixth form."

"Good luck," Dr Granger says. GCSE results day is in three weeks. With an exchange of goodbyes, she puts the phone down. Hermione looks at her, not daring to breathe.

"Well, she seems like a lovely girl," her mother says at last. "You can go if you want, Hermione, but Daddy will drop you off in the car."

She conceals the relief which is making her knees weak. "That's alright, Mummy. Thank you so much."

Hermione is still fretting over how she'll extricate herself before midnight as her dad drives her to the address Ginny texted her. It's not far from their house, only a ten-minute drive. She can walk that easily tonight. Maybe faking illness? A headache?

Dr Granger whistles as they pull up to an immense double-fronted semi-detached house with four cars parks haphazardly across the sprawling driveway.

"Big house," he says, impressed.

"Ginny has six siblings," Hermione says, already halfway out of the car. "See you tomorrow, Daddy! Goodnight!"

Her father looks like he wants to come in and meet Ginny's parents, but before he can voice it Hermione has already hurried up the front door and pressed the doorbell. Deep inside, a clanging can be heard.

The door is thrown open by a long-limbed young man with locks of flaming hair obscuring one eye. The other one he blinks at her is a pure cornflower blue.

"Hello?" he says throatily.

His voice hits Hermione like a truck. That does it: the Weasleys have _got_ to be demons. He's inhumanly handsome too, with a sullenly sensuous mouth and a jawline that could cut diamonds.

"Hi," she says, clearing her throat. "I'm Hermione Granger? Ginny's friend?"

"Oh, yeah, she told us you'd be coming," he says. "Come on in." He steps to the side, but not far enough that she can avoid pressing against him as she slides past. His skin is blazing hot.

Hermione lives in a wealthy neighbourhood, but even by her standards the Weasleys' house is big. Doors confront her on every side. She hovers next to whichever of Ginny's brothers this is, unsure of where to go.

"Let me call her," he says. "Ginny! Ginny, come down, Hermione's here!"

A door pops open, but it isn't Ginny. It's a curvy middle-aged woman with luxuriant red hair pinned into a loose knot and a smile on her lips.

"Hermione!" she says. "It's nice to meet you."

Hermione holds out her hand for a shake, but is astounded when the woman sweeps her into a hug against her fulsome bosom. What on earth is happening? She's never been greeted so enthusiastically before, not even by her own parents.

"I'm Molly Weasley," the woman says. "Ginny's mum. Have you had dinner yet? You must be starved!"

She ignores Hermione's protests that she's already dined. Ten minutes later, without quite knowing how it's happened, Hermione is sitting at a huge dining table with a heaping plate of chicken pie in front of her and the entire Weasley clan gathered around her.

She's certain now that they're demons – and they must be blood traitors, if they're with the Order. They're each more beautiful than the next, and Hermione would swear to it that the eldest son, a man in his mid-twenties named Bill, even has hellfire burning in his eyes. When they're all in the room together she gets an itch at the back of her neck and goosebumps on her arms.

Ginny has finally come downstairs to meet her guest. She's the one who performs the introductions.

"This is Ron, Harry's best friend," she says, nodding at the boy who opened the door. "He's your age. Then there are Fred and George, the twins, Percy, and Bill. Charlie is in Romania right now or you'd meet him too. And that's my dad, Arthur."

Hermione mumbles greetings. She's uncomfortable with so much attention being on her. Every single one of them is perched on chairs around her, but they aren't eating; they're just watching her eat. Their gazes feel like lasers. She moistens her dry lips.

"So, where am I sleeping?" she asks.

"You can have Charlie's room," Molly says. "We're using it as a spare bedroom while he's off on his travels."

Hermione mumbles acquiescence. It's already seven-thirty p.m., and nobody has mentioned being at the church by eight yet. Should she remind them?

It turns out that she doesn't have to. Once she's finally managed to consume the last bite of pie, Molly whisks the plate away and orders Ginny to show her to her room. Hermione is only too glad to escape the constant press of eyes.

"Here's Charlie's room," Ginny says, stopping on the third floor. "Let me know if you have any issues with it."

Hermione steps in as Ginny flicks on the light. Her jaw drops. It's a small room, and almost every inch of wallpaper is covered with pictures of dragons: paintings, drawings, illustrations of dragons in various sizes and colours, swooping and diving and breathing flames onto unsuspecting forests.

"Oh, my God," she says faintly.

"Yeah, Charlie's a good artist," Ginny says, pride softening her voice.

"They're certainly very… realistic," Hermione says diplomatically.

"Yeah. Well, anyway, you might want to get ready now. We're heading out to meet Harry and the others at the church in five minutes."

Others? Does she mean the other Order members? Hermione still has no idea why the Weasleys and Harry are suddenly so forthcoming. Are they seriously about to 'reveal' the existence of demons to her? If so, why her?

She plans on finding out tonight.

Hermione's in jeans, Converse, and a jumper. When she goes back downstairs to wait for Ginny she's a little disconcerted to find that every single Weasley is also there putting their shoes, apparently coming with them.

"You'll be travelling in Ron's car with him and Ginny," Molly informs her brightly. Ron looks up at the sound of his name. His eyes are heavy-lidded, the ideal definition of _bedroom eyes_; it's an appealing image, but Hermione isn't sure she trusts someone who seems only half-awake at the wheel.

Well, she has no choice. She goes out to Ron's blue Kia Forte with him while they wait for Ginny. Something about her seems to be putting him on edge: he keeps tapping the steering wheel agitatedly and stealing glances at her out of the corner of his eye.

She's about to ask him what his problem is when Ginny slides into the car. "Sorry I'm late," she puffs. "Quick, let's go!"

The Weasleys pull out onto the road. It's like some sort of convoy – Molly, Arthur, and Bill in one car; Percy and the twins in another; she, Ginny, and Ron in a third. There's little traffic at this time of night, so they reach the church in record time. Ron parks in the tiny carpark designated for shoppers at the Sainsbury's next to the church.

"We're here!" Ginny says, all but rubbing her hands together in excitement. "Come on, Hermione!"

Hermione lets herself be dragged forward. She's experiencing slight qualms, but they're only the qualms of anyone who's been talked into entering a building with a host of strangers late at night. She deals with them through logic as always. Her phone is with her, of course, so she can call the police if necessary. The Sainsbury's is still open if she needs somewhere to flee quickly to, with bright lights, people, and CCTV. They can't do anything to her in there. She just needs to be alert but not paranoid. And keep an eye on the time, of course. Four hours left until her date with a demon tonight.

Hermione files into the Church of Hogwarts ahead of the Weasleys, and freezes in surprise. The building has been transformed. It's usually filled with sunlight and hushed silence, the pews bare and empty.

But not tonight. Tonight, it's filled with people. They're talking and laughing in a muted chatter, draping themselves over the chairs, drinking out of silver gem-studded goblets. They begin to turn as they notice the Weasleys' – and Hermione's – entrance.

"You made it!" Harry says, making a beeline for them. He's swapped out his jeans and T-shirt for dark trousers and a white shirt. Ginny stands on tiptoe to give him a smacking kiss of greeting and Hermione averts her eyes. In the process, her gaze collides with that of Ron, who gives her an eyeroll of shared disgust. Oh, that's right. He's Harry's best friend, isn't he? Must be weird to have him dating his sister.

A silence is falling throughout the church as people see where Harry has gone. Hermione's palms are sweating freely. The largest crowd is gathered around the table of candles, and she catches a glimpse of someone familiar through the throng.

It parts as he comes closer. An unnaturally tall man, his white beard reaching down to his waist, his eyes as blue as midnight frost.

"Hello, Hermione," Albus Dumbledore says genially. "I've been expecting you."

* * *

**AN: I wasn't planning on updating today, but I couldn't help it. You guys gave me such an amazing response on the last chapter! I'm super grateful to each and every one of you, I honestly can't express how much it means to me when you take a few minutes out to tell me what you think. As you can see, the chapters are getting longer now so I'm really not sure if I can have one ready for tomorrow as well, but we'll see. **

**This chapter is dedicated to guest reviewer BDShadothe. You make excellent points! I hope I can clear them up for you in future chapters. I will say though, that in the last chapter where Draco claims that his deal with Hermione is actually disadvantaging him, he's not being serious and she knows it. He's exaggerating to make her say yes.**

**The story does have a fair bit of British life/culture in it, with UCAS and all the rest of it, so if there's anything you find confusing, please let me know! I hope you enjoy, do let me know what you think. **


	6. VI: Many Might Go to Heaven

**AN: ****Here is today's update! As ever, please do review. This chapter is dedicated to 'I Dont Do Words'!**

**At the bottom if you're interested, I've put up the origin of all the quotations I use in chapter titles! I really enjoy researching them, so I thought I'd share. **

* * *

**Chapter VI: Many Might Go to Heaven with Half the Labour They Go to Hell**

_**(Ben Jonson)**_

Hermione's gaze darts from the man before her to his identical portrait on the wall. He follows the movement.

"Yes, that's me," he says. "Albus."

"You've been… expecting me?" she parrots. With a concentrated effort, she tamps down the rising panic so she can keep thinking clearly. She's going to need her wits about her, especially if she needs to make a run for it. "Why? How?" The unasked question: Are you about to sacrifice me? The muscles of her legs tense in preparation.

He chooses to answer her second question. "I saw you in the tea leaves," he says affably, smiling. "An imprecise art, of course, nothing like the True Sight the devil can manage. But since he can't speak of what he sees, the rest of us poor souls get by on little tricks and shortcuts. Every so often, one of these shortcuts even bears fruit."

Her lip curls. "The tea leaves," she says, voice flat and blatantly disbelieving. "Of course. So instead of admitting you've been… stalking me, or whatever, you expect me to believe you saw me in your afternoon Earl Grey, is that it?"

He shakes his head at her. "I'm afraid we're just going to have to agree to disagree on that score, Hermione. Come. There are some people I want you to meet."

Keenly aware that the eyes of almost everyone in the church are upon her, she lets Harry push her forward slightly.

"This is Sirius," Dumbledore says of the man standing on his left. "Sirius Black."

She jerks slightly at the surname and instantly tries to cover it up with a cough, hoping nobody has noticed. _Black?_ As in, the House of Black to which Draco's mother belongs to, and one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight pureblood families of Hell? This is the first incontrovertible evidence of what she's suspected all along: that she's currently surrounded by blood traitor demons.

Physically, there's no resemblance between Draco and Sirius – at least not beyond the same striking looks which Hermione is beginning to suspect must be a demonic trait. It would make sense: sin is supposed to be attractive, to trip people up and turn them inside out with desire, and Sirius Black certainly looks capable of the task. He's incredibly tall, several inches over six feet. The hair which brushes the collar of his leather jacket in sleek waves is black as a moonless night, against which his pale skin gleams lustrously fair. His heavy-lidded eyes are North Sea grey. The primary similarity to Draco is that every cell of his body oozes casual, contemptuous arrogance.

Hermione considers putting out her hand for a handshake, the habit of politeness hard to break, but the wolfish grin he gives her makes her reconsider. She settles for a nod.

"That's my godfather," Harry says, the pride in his voice evident.

Hermione is hit by a barrage of outlandish names and faces. Nymphadora Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Dedalus Diggle, Emmaline Vance, Amelia Bones; in comparison, the name Draco seems positively mundane. At least it's an actual Latin word. She keeps nodding at every new introduction Dumbledore performs, her hand kept safely by her side.

Finally there seems to be nobody left to meet. By this time, Hermione's confusion is at a fever pitch. She hadn't entered the Church of Hogwarts expecting some sort of networking session. Where are the answers she was promised?

"So, Hermione," Dumbledore says, as the last person to be greeted – a rakish, disreputable-looking fellow named Mundungus Fletcher, the sort of person she'd normally cross the street to avoid – slinks away. They're in an isolated circle by the table; the only people in their little group are Dumbledore, Hermione, Harry, Ginny, and (oddly enough) Ron. "You're probably wondering why you're here."

"The thought had crossed my mind, yes," she says drily.

He fixes her with his penetratingly blue eyes. Even though his silvery hair and beard are testament to immense age, his skin is almost unlined. "Well, there's no point beating about the bush," he says. "I am a demon."

A series of possible responses pass as fast as lightning through her head. She rapidly selects the most realistic one and discards the others.

"What?" she says, as though she hadn't heard. "Sorry?"

"I am a demon," Dumbledore repeats. "Born and bred in the flames of Azkaban, eldest son of a High Lord of Hell." He looks at her expectantly.

Hermione has never been a good liar, but she throws herself into her role with everything she has. Her life depends on it.

"Is this some kind of joke?" she asks coldly. "Because I find it distinctly unamusing." She glares at Harry. "Did you seriously bring me all this way here just to waste my time?"

She turns as though to go, but Ginny catches her wrist. Her touch burns. "Not so fast," she says. "We can prove it."

Hermione laughs without humour. "Look, I'm not looking to be converted into whatever religion it is you people practise, so if you could just –"

She breaks off. Ginny is holding out her hand, and in her palm is blazing a little ball of blue flames.

"Fiendfyre," the other girl says. "The flames of Hell itself, accessible to every demon."

So she is a demon too. Hermione feels her customary smugness at being proven right, but it's quickly swept away by more important concerns. She isn't a good actress, and she's struggling to work out whether now is a good time to declare she believes them, or if they'd become suspicious at her easy capitulation.

"I'm not going to be impressed by a little magic trick," she settles for declaring.

Dumbledore sighs. "In that case, Hermione, perhaps this will convince you."

He reaches out with one long finger and taps her forehead. Instantly she collapses in a fit of hysterical giggles. It feels as though a hundred fingers are tickling her mercilessly over every sensitive inch of her body

"Stop!" she chokes out, in between gasps of laughter. "Stop!"

The feeling vanishes. She struggles back to her feet, panting. She can definitely admit to believing them now.

"Are you satisfied now?" Dumbledore asks.

She nods. "But why are you telling me all of this?" Finally, a chance to ask the question that's been consuming her since this morning.

"Patience. Let me start back at the beginning," he says. "So, as we've established, I am a demon, as is almost everyone else in this room. But you have nothing to fear from us. I am the founder of the Order of the Phoenix, an organisation which aims to eradicate every trace of demonic influence from the human world."

He's not telling her anything she doesn't know yet. "Why?" she asks. "Why would you do that for humans?"

There's a long pause. Dumbledore looks thoughtful. "Everyone here has a different reason," he says. "For example, two of my greatest lieutenants joined after they fell in love with a human. Lucius Malfoy, ruler of Hell, does not look kindly upon those who commit what he considers to be betrayals of the demonic creed by working actively for humans rather than against them. In fact, he calls us blood traitors. Others are in the Order because they believe that humans are a delightful and interesting race, and should be allowed to live their lives unmolested. Still others are… atoning, shall we say, for the sins they have committed in the past. There really is not a single answer, Hermione."

Interesting. But her original point still stands. "Why are you telling me all of this?" she says.

"Because you stink like the fucking Malfoys," Ron growls out next to her, shocking her by speaking.

Hermione swings around to face him, her heart hammering. This is it. This is why they've brought her here. It's all an elaborate lead-up to announcing that they know her secret deals and are planning to kill her for it.

"The _Malfoys_?" she says, voice reedy. "I – I don't – I can't –"

She needs to run. But then Dumbledore starts speaking again.

"The issue is, as Ron rather crudely put it, there is a distinct scent of the House of Malfoy about you," he explains. "We suspect that they have been watching you in your sleep, or perhaps that Lucius has sent his son Draco to track you, for reasons we cannot yet begin to fathom. But they cannot be good reasons. They are planning something nefarious. But Hermione, please don't be alarmed – we'll be taking care of it. We just thought it would be better to let you know, so you can better protect yourself."

The relief nearly makes her pass out. Oh, thank God. They don't suspect her at all. They think she's an unwitting victim of the Malfoys.

Fortunately, Dumbledore mistakes the reason for both her previous panic and sudden spate of dizziness. "There's truly no need to distress yourself," he says gently. "It's undeniably unprecedented that the devil would take such an interest in a human; we don't yet know why, but Lucius is possessed of foresight, so we suspect that he has seen something which makes him believe you will be helpful to him in some way. But there is one key thing you must bear in mind, Hermione. _Demons cannot force you to do anything you do not want to do."_

She draws in a breath. "Demons can't force humans?"

"No, we can't," Ginny says. "We can tempt, and beg, and threaten, and plead, but we can't physically hurt humans. We can't affect your free will."

Free will? This is getting far more complex and theological than Hermione was expecting, or indeed is equipped to handle while her limbs still feel weak from the near miss. She didn't even do an RS GCSE. Grand concepts like free will are far beyond her remit.

"That's… reassuring," she says faintly. She'd suspected something similar anyway. _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_ makes it clear that the devil can't begin to affect your life until you invite him in by summoning him. And Draco's never hurt her or forced her to do anything: his preferred method of dealing with her is through deals, which involve her willing acquiescence. It seems this is a limitation of demonic nature.

"Do you need to sit down, Hermione?" Harry asks, looking at her with concern. "We know it's a lot to take in. But Dumbledore is right – we'll keep an eye on you. They can't hurt you."

She sees her chance. "It is a lot to take in," she agrees, keeping her voice frail. "I'm… I'm not totally sure I really want to stay in someone else's house tonight. I think I'd rather come to grips with this in my own bedroom, if you don't mind."

"We don't mind," Ron says curtly. "I'll drop you off home after the Order meeting is over."

She nods. She can't believe how good demon senses are, that they're able to _smell_ another person on her. Perhaps that's what was bothering him in the car.

Dumbledore calls a start to the meeting. The Order members drag some chairs into a rough rectangle so they can all see each other. Hermione ends up in between Ron and Ginny. The former still looks like he's away with the fairies, and the latter is busy applying a coat of scarlet lipstick as Dumbledore starts speaking.

"We've received word of a planned Death Eater meeting in Angel Park," he says calmly. "Arthur and Sirius will be –"

Hermione's hand shoots up, like it always does if someone is lecturing and she has a question. Dumbledore looks surprised but says, "Yes?"

"What are Death Eaters?" she asks.

It's Sirius who answers. "Lucius Malfoy's inner circle," he says, with languorous unconcern. "Mostly, of course, the High Lords of Hell, but sometimes he permits a beast or two to join, if they're useful to him. The Leviathan in the Lake… the Fenrir wolf…"

"But what do they actually _do_?" Hermione pushes.

"Whatever they can," Sirius says. "They walk the earth, causing pain and suffering, disease and darkness and death. They don't _do_ anything, in the sense you mean; they can't. But they bring forth humans' most sinful desires, and then humans do their dirty work for them."

Hermione chews this over. It's the most interesting thing she's learnt all evening.

So this is what demons actually do: unleash the latent evil that exists inside human beings. Persuade them to give in to the devils on their shoulder, as it were. She wonders how she feels about this. Probably she should feel outraged, like the Order clearly does. But Hermione has not had the sort of life which permits her to maintain many illusions about human goodness. Adults can be cruel, and children are crueller. _Have been_ crueller to her. It isn't as though demons force humans into being monsters – they manage it all by themselves.

Dumbledore resumes the meeting. "Back to Angel Park," he says. He smiles slightly.

"Lucius and his sense of humour," Sirius says, rolling his eyes.

Hermione was thinking the very same thing. Islington, and the Angel area in it, is a nice, quiet, wealthy London borough. Pretty much the last place you'd expect to be an outpost of Hell.

"Arthur and Sirius will be in charge of leading the offensive teams," Dumbledore says. "The Death Eater meeting will be at midnight, on the Thursday three weeks from today. I will circulate a message with the appropriate team breakdown later. Getting this information was a difficult process for our agent, so we need to move very carefully."

"I can be careful," Ginny says, scowling.

"Not until you're seventeen, Gin, you know that," Ron says from Hermione's other side. He sounds bored, like this is an argument they've had countless times before.

Harry looks apologetic when Ginny turns to him for support. Finally she subsides back in her seat, sulking.

"Honestly, can you believe it?" she says to Hermione in a loud whisper. "Damn near immortal, and Mum and Dad _still_ won't let me join!"

Her ears prick up. Damn near immortal? Unsurprising, but the near is what she wants to know more about. What's the thing that can kill demons?

She steals a glance at her wristwatch, expecting it to be ten-thirty p.m. at the most, and receives an unpleasant shock. It's already eleven! Draco and Theodore will be there in only an hour! She turns to Ron urgently.

"Can you take me home now?" she asks. She doesn't have to work hard to inject a note of barely suppressed hysteria into her voice. "It's been a really long day, and I've had to take in a lot, and I'm exhausted, and my head hurts now, so…" She shrugs helplessly.

"Sure," Ron says gruffly as he gets up. Not a man of many words, is he?

Hermione makes her goodbyes to the Weasleys and Harry, who clasps her hand.

"Please don't worry about anything, Hermione," he says earnestly, looking up at her. "We won't let the Malfoys use you."

She smiles wryly. "Thank you, Harry."

Ron drives her home in silence. As they're approaching her house, he finally breaks it.

"The Malfoys are dangerous," he says.

"Yes," she says. "I hadn't thought the ruling family of Hell would be cute and cuddly."

"We'll be dropping by to check on you," he promises. It sounds more threatening than soothing.

Comforting herself with the assurance that the Order definitely doesn't suspect her, she lets herself into her house with her key. All is dark and silent; naturally her parents are asleep at this hour. She's never had to practise sneaking around, so she cringes at the loud squeaks the stairs emit when she tries to creep quietly up to her room, but they don't stir.

She gets changed into her pyjamas and settles into bed with a book. There's less than an hour left until Draco's arrival, so she isn't planning on going to sleep, but her body has other ideas. Before she knows it her eyelids have drifted shut.

She dreams that it's a hot summer's day – which it is. She's gone to her freezer and, for reasons unknown, taken out a pair of ice cubes. Moving slowly, languidly, she traces them all over her face, up and down her cheeks. They leave little runnels of freezing water which feels incredible against her overheated skin.

Slowly she becomes hazily aware that the coldness is real. A pair of icy lips are pressed against her cheeks.

"Have you been a good girl while I was gone, Hermione?" Draco murmurs into her ear.

* * *

**AN: QUOTATION ORIGINS**

**The one from which I took the whole story's title is, of course, _between the Devil and the deep blue sea_, which has existed in one form or another since the 1500s. It was originally _between the Devil and the dead sea_, then in 1637 it's recorded as 'deep sea.' The inclusion of 'blue' dates only from the late Victorian era.**

**1\. _The road to Hell is paved with good intentions: _This complete phrasing was first recorded only in 1855, but proverbs expressing the same meaning (i.e. the road to Hell is easy) date back to Virgil's _Aeneid_, and there's a similar sentiment in the Bible. Just the first bit of the proverb (Hell is paved with good intentions) can be found in a 1670 book.**

**2\. _The Devil's in the details:_ Funnily enough, this one is a corruption of the German proverb 'God is in the details'! Our version only dates from the late 1960s. **

**3\. _Hell is other people_: A quotation from Sartre's play _No Exit. _Interestingly, he's often widely believed to have said that _Hell is an eternity spent with your friends_, which in my opinion is a way cooler quotation, but I can't find any sources or attribution for that one. He doesn't seem to have actually said it sadly.**

**4\. _Hell is empty / And all the devils are here_: A quotation from Shakespeare's play _The Tempest_. The character who says it is the fairy Ariel: he tells his master Prospero that Prince Ferdinand jumped into the ocean from his sinking ship (a disaster engineered by Prospero) crying out those words. **

**5\. _If I cannot move Heaven, I will raise Hell_: This is a (loose) translation of words spoken by Juno in Virgil's _Aeneid_. The actual translation would be something more like 'If I cannot move the will of Heaven, I will move Hell.' It gained fame after Sigmund Freud used it in the dedication at the front of _The Interpretation of Dreams_. **

**6\. _Many might go to Heaven with half the labour they go to Hell_: The rest of playwright Ben Jonson's quotation is:**** if they would venture their industry the right way.**

**Let me know if you enjoyed these, I'll do them for the other chapters as well!**


	7. VII: Heaven for the Climate

**Chapter VII: Heaven for the Climate, Hell for the Company**

_**(Mark Twain)**_

Hermione jerks into full awareness with a gasp.

Draco leans back, smirking. He's crouched by the side of her bed, uncomfortably close, the black stud in his ear glittering. Hermione sits up. She can't breathe when he's that close to her.

"Of course I was a good girl," she lies, sitting on her hands to stop any nervous movements from giving her away.

He raises an eyebrow. "Sure about that?"

Her palms are sweating. She discovered too late that demons can smell each other on her, and she prays that she wasn't around Harry and the Weasleys for long enough that their scent settled into her skin.

"Of course I'm sure," she snaps, covering up her mistruth with aggression. Crookshanks meows softly from a cat-bed on the other side of the room.

"Pity," he says sleekly. "Haven't you ever heard that bad girls have more fun?"

"No, I have not," she says, glaring at him. She hates how he makes fun of her, but he seems to get a real kick out of it. Sadist. To distract him, she hurriedly changes the topic of conversation.

"Where's Theodore?"

"I left him behind today," Draco says. "You see, I plan to collect my kisses now, and you seem like the type of girl who'd object to an audience."

Instantly, fire sizzles through her bloodstream. Hermione's palms slicken with sweat, and she swallows, forcing the saliva down a throat that's suddenly dry as bone.

"Ah, the k-kisses," she says. "Of course."

Draco's silver eyes are lit with unholy glee. "I trust you aren't reneging on our agreement, my pet? That would forfeit your immortal soul, and I don't think you're ready for that stage in our relationship _quite_ yet…"

"I certainly am not reneging," she says stiffly. She resists the impulse to ask about precisely what forfeiting one's immortal soul entails; there are more important topics that need to be discussed right now. "I'd just like some clarification on why, precisely, our deal exists. Obviously, I realise this is something I should have asked you _prior_ to actually making the deal – " this admission is squeezed out from between gritted teeth – "but, well, I suppose I was rather blinded by the thought of getting my hands on all those answers." Hermione hates admitting her mistakes, but this particular bit of honesty is a calculated one. She watches its effect on Draco from beneath her dark brown lashes. Perhaps he'll respond with similar candidness.

He looks thoughtful. His long, elegant fingers tap a staccato rhythm against his chin.

"You really don't understand demon nature very well, do you, Hermione?" he says. "I'm the _son of the Devil_. All I want in life is to get the upper hand. And you came along, so soft and sweet, with such an obvious weakness for answers…" He shrugs expansively. "What else could I do but give them to you? I want my own answers too, as well, you know. I've never kissed a Mudblood before."

Hermione relaxes. This is more or less the reason she suspected, and it's certainly one she can sympathise with. "Well then, I suppose we're well matches," she murmurs. She has to clear her throat, and her voice comes out huskier than usual. "Since I've never kissed a demon before. Or anyone else, for that matter."

It's a humiliating thing to disclose, but somehow she can't care right now. Not when Draco is looking at her as though she's the first girl he's ever seen, his expression hungry, the blackness of desire slowly bleeding into his eyes. It's an almost record-breaking thirty-two degrees outside. No wonder that, between the demon and the weather, Hermione's entire body is coated with a slippery layer of sweat and she wants nothing more than to strip off her practical cotton pyjamas.

Slowly, deliberately, he leans closer to her.

"Wait!" Hermione blurts, leaning backwards. She holds her hand up. "Wait just one moment. Do you confirm that there will be no lasting effects from these kisses, and that you have no interest in – in _me_ whatsoever, and this is all just out of academic interest?"

Draco growls. His teeth have lengthened, and Hermione feels a thrill of some indescribable combination of lust and terror as she sees razor-sharp fangs dropping down to indent his full bottom lip.

"Yes, yes, I confirm it," he says. His voice is thick as it emerges around canines too big for his mouth.

An unexpected bolt of disappointment shoots through her. Hermione instantly chastises herself. It's not as though she can really want to be with the Devil's son, after all. It's enough that there's even someone in the world (well, worlds) who's attracted to her enough to withstand a kiss. She shouldn't be getting greedy.

Yet she can't deny the existence of that tiny fragment of dissatisfaction. To combat it, Hermione reaches up to Draco's shoulders and drags him to her mouth.

It starts out badly. His skin is startlingly cold. She knocked them together too hard, and there's a stab of pain in her lower lip as one of his fangs splits it open. Blood wells up. He licks it off delicately, like a cat, and then they're really kissing, his tongue darting into her mouth, his own mouth a wet warmth she explores cautiously. It feels… strange. It feels… _good_. His hands slide down to cage her wrists and he's sucking on her lower lip, sending flashes of sensation down to the place between her thighs.

Her skin is burning with desire. She lets out a gasp and he swallows it down, mouth slanted over hers. The pinch of accidentally letting her tongue stray too close to his teeth only makes her nipples harden into jutting points, desperate to feel the same. Wildly she considers moving his hand to cup one of her breasts, like she's read about in romance novels.

But wait. Her skin isn't just burning with desire. It's really burning. Hermione pulls away, heart pounding like it's about to burst out of her chest, gulping down heavy lungfuls of air heavily spiced with lust. She stares down in disbelief as Draco finally releases her wrists.

The pale, fragile skin of her inner wrists has been branded.

A jagged green-and-black shield, with a vicious-looking letter M on it and flanked on either side by a rampant black dragon, has appeared. Sharp spears and ornate snakes writhe around the image. At the bottom of each shield is a piece of scrollwork with minute Latin letters: _sanctimonia vincet semper._

_Purity conquers always._

She doesn't have to be a genius to realise she's just been branded with the House of Malfoy coat-of-arms.

Hermione rounds on Draco, still unable to believe her eyes. The demon boy looks incredibly smug, a feral grin on his face and irises still pitch-black with want. He licks his lips with a flicker of his pink tongue as though to soak up every last trace of her flavour. Hermione suppresses the need which flares inside her at the sight.

"Draco!" she says furiously. She shakes an arm in front of his face. "What the hell is this? You said there'd be no effect from the kisses!"

"Obviously, I lied," he says with exaggerated patience, as though speaking to someone mentally challenged. "I'm a demon, my pet. It's what I do."

Anger blazes inside her, more at being tricked than the possible consequences of the trick itself. "You said you had no interest in me! Any Mudblood would have done for you!"

"I lied again," he says unrepentantly. His gaze is slowly dropping to her lips once more. "It turns out, Hermione, that out of all the Mudbloods who infest this uncouth little planet, you are the one I am most interested in damning. There is nothing I would find more entertaining than corrupting you enough to make your soul end up in Hell after your death."

That's the second time he's mentioned souls tonight. Hermione can no longer suppress overpower her curiosity.

"What exactly happens after death?" she asks. "The immortal question, I suppose you could say…"

Regretfully he seems to abandon any hope of obtaining the further four kisses he's owed tonight. Draco settles himself on the edge of her mattress.

"I'm going to count this as your sixth question of last night," he says. "So, when people die, they are given a choice. Go on to receive judgement – or become a ghost."

Instantly Hermione starts shaking her head. "No, no, no, no," she says vehemently. "Ghosts do not exist! I've accepted demons, and devils, and even bloody future-telling, but you cannot tell me ghosts exist. They've been constantly disproven!"

He looks amused. "You are a stubborn pet, aren't you? You wanted a more adventurous life, yet every time I tell you it exists, you revert to denying it. Why don't I take you to see a ghost with your own eyes?"

She stills. "You'd do that?"

"Of course," he says easily. He stands and offers her his arm like a Regency nobleman. He's dressed like one today, the way Lucius was when he summoned him: white ruffled shirt and tan breeches under a long black cloak, gleaming black Hessians. Hermione is about to take his arm when she hesitates and looks down.

"If we're going somewhere, I should probably change."

They both regard her flower-print nightshirt and matching trousers. Draco's lips quirk into a smile.

"Leave it to me," he says.

He murmurs something, and the next moment, Hermione feels cool air blossom over her skin. Her jaw drops when she sees what he's replaced her pyjamas with. The nightshirt has transformed into a tight black halter-top, abbreviated to reveal the curve of her stomach, while the trousers have become a dark denim miniskirt under which emerge her plump thighs and calves. On her feet are strappy sandals.

Mortification makes Hermione's face redden. "Draco!" she says, a hysterical edge to her voice. "Stop it! I can't go out like this!"

She's never been in clothes so revealing, preferring to conceal the heaviness of her body behind the screen of clothing, and to have the illusion shattered in front of the only boy she's ever kissed is… not a good feeling. Almost as bad is the fact that her legs are unshaven, and the dark hairs show up springily against the paleness of her legs.

"Hermione, shut up. You look beautiful," he says impatiently. "Come on, let's go!"

Slowly, she takes a step in his direction.

Nothing changes. He doesn't suddenly look disgusted, or shocked, or put off. Hardly daring to breathe, she scuttles the few remaining steps to him and grasps his arm.

"Are we going to teleport there?" she asks.

"It's called Apparition," he corrects.

She snorts. "Seriously? Apparition to see a ghost?"

Smirking, he tucks her closer into his side and turns once on his heel.

It feels as though Hermione's being squeezed through the smallest of tubes. The ground beneath her feet vanishes. She staggers in the next moment as it reappears, hard and rocky under her thin soles, and blinks to clear her gaze. Her fist has a death grip on the muscles of Draco's arm.

Wherever they are, it's dark. The only light sources are the reflective feline shine of Draco's eyes and a faint ray of pale moonlight coming from an unidentifiable location. It takes a moment for her eyes to acclimatise, but when they do, she stares.

They're in a throne room.

Oh, it's an ancient one. The stone floor is cracked and uneven; there's no glass in the slitted opening through which the moonlight gleams; and the thronelike chair on a raised dais has long become home to some type of bird. Yet the soaring ceiling is still so grand it disappears up into shadow, and there's a hushed silence pervading the room which makes Hermione's breaths come shallowly.

"Where are we?" she says, almost soundlessly.

"A long-forgotten castle in the heart of an old Albanian forest," Draco answers. He doesn't trouble to keep his voice down, and his arrogance shatters the quiet like gunshots. "Home now to two of the only ghosts on earth worth knowing." He raises his voice even louder. "Helena! Waldo! Come here!"

"Draco!" Hermione hisses. Her hand has slid down to tangle with his fingers. "Maybe you shouldn't summon dead people that way?"

He laughs. "If they'd chosen judgment, they'd be mine to rule over in Hell, and they know it. They'll come."

He isn't wrong. A slow, creeping chill sweeps its way up Hermione's body, caressing the unaccustomed bareness of her legs, arms, and shoulders. She shivers and whirls around.

Ghosts look pretty much exactly as everyone always thinks they do. The woman in front of them is silvery and see-through, floating above the ground in a floor-length dress which bears testament to her age. She's a young woman – not much more than twenty – but her face has an elegant beauty only those of a bygone age possessed. There's a darker translucent splodge right over her heart.

"You called me, Draco Malfoy," she says tonelessly.

"Yes, I did," he says in satisfaction. "There's someone I want you to speak to. Hermione, this is Helena Ravenclaw, the Grey Lady, the half-living daughter of a long-dead queen. And that –" his voice sharpens as he looks at something through the ghost's transparent body – "is the Bloody Baron."

The ghost now slowly drifting towards them certainly lives up to his name. His armoured body is covered in chains and patches of darker silver Hermione recognises as blood. Although his face is handsome, it has an unspeakable coldness which makes her feel glad Draco is with her.

"I'm… pleased to meet you," she manages to say, although her voice trembles slightly. She, Hermione Granger, is meeting _ghosts_. She longs to see whether she'd go straight through the ghosts but knows she'd never dare. It must be incredibly rude – and probably unpleasant for her, too.

"Let me tell you their story," Draco says. "Once upon a time, over a thousand years ago, there was a young princess named Helena. She was pretty, but she was –"

"Spoilt," the Grey Lady says flatly. "Terribly spoilt. Nothing my mother said could sway me, and there was no bit or bridle could make me yield to aught but my own desires."

"Quite," Draco says. "And one day, this young princess steals her mother's beloved diadem, said to bring wisdom to the wearer, and she escapes into the wildest forests she knows with her treasure clutched to her chest. Nobody knows where she's gone. But her mother knows there is one man in all the worlds who will find her, even to the ends of the earth, and bring her daughter home."

"Me," the Bloody Baron says. His voice jolts Hermione like electricity. It's deep, hard, the rasp of metal over stone, containing the weight of centuries.

"Yes, you," Draco agrees. "You see, the Baron had long been madly in love with the princess. She feared the blood on his hands and the blackness of his heart, so she always stayed away from him, but she gave up that luxury when she fled."

"There was no place I could have gone," the Grey Lady says softly, "where he could not have found me."

"And so he caught up to her here, in a forgotten castle in Albania, already old a thousand years ago," Draco continues. "He begged her to return with him. They argued. They fought. He lost his temper. And then he damned his immortal soul: he pulled out his sword in rage and ran his true love through the heart."

At his words, Hermione can't contain a muted gasp. "What happened next?" she breathes.

Draco shrugs negligently. "He killed himself, of course. He knew he could not live in a world without her, and he was tormented by guilt and rage. The Dark Lord appeared to them –"

"The Dark Lord?" Hermione interrupts. "You mean your father?"

He shakes his head. "The Dark Lord is ruler of the choice given to the dead. Carry on to judgement, and receive either the terrors of Hell or the joys of Heaven – or stay in the world of the living until the end of time. As ghosts. The Dark Lord was once a human named Tom Riddle, who strove to cheat death seven times, but it caught up with him eventually. It always does."

_Tom Riddle_. A normal name, a snakelike name, a name that rolls off Hermione's tongue. "What happened next?" she echoes.

"I chose to become a ghost," the Grey Lady says. "I feared to meet my mother again, and I knew that stealing had blackened my soul. I did not want to risk the judgement. He followed me, of course. He always has. He always will."

"In life and in death," the Bloody Baron says, almost tenderly.

"He's correct," Draco says. "There is one thing which even the Devil must bow to, and that is Love, however unholy. She and he will be locked here together, never one without the other, until the Judgement Day."

Hermione can't speak. Emotion has risen up in her throat, and she feels so many conflicting things that she can't voice them for several long moments. She watches the Grey Lady and Bloody Baron drift silently out of the throne room, the latter trailing the former.

"Well, Hermione?" Draco says softly. He is watching her, head tilted to one side, an unreadable look in his eyes. "Such is demonic love."

Finally, after much swallowing, she finds her voice. "I can't deny," she says quietly, "that the thought of love is appealing. _Being_ loved is appealing. I have always been lonely, Draco, and what you've shown me just now – eternal companionship, someone who loves you so much you're with them forever… well, I can't say I've never imagined what it would be like. But I don't want to go to Hell. I may not be religious. But I still don't want to end up in Hell, and you're the Devil's son – you can never escape it."

He looks at her. She thinks he'll argue. Her hand is slippery in his, and her skin is covered in goosebumps. An old, half-remembered Irish poem slips into her mind.

_It was by yonder thorn I saw the fairy host  
__(O low night wind, O wind of the west!)  
__My love rode by, there was gold upon his brow,  
__And since that day I can neither eat nor rest._

_I dare not pray lest I should forget his face  
__(O black north wind blowing cold beneath the sky!)  
__His face and his eyes shine between me and the sun:  
__If I may not be with him I would rather die._

But he doesn't argue. Instead, he says simply, "Let's go home."

They Apparate back into her bedroom. Hermione is so full of feeling she almost stumbles straight into bed, but then pauses as her gaze snags on the twin Malfoy crests adorning either wrist.

"Why?" she asks. "Why did you do this?"

His gaze jerks up and he stares straight as her, as dangerous as a hunting cat. "Be warned, Hermione," he says. "Demons have good noses. I told you not to go near Harry Potter."

She staggers backwards. She'd forgotten all about dealing with that issue. He hadn't brought up it up, so she'd thought she was safe.

"I… er, that is…"

"Don't lie, Hermione," he says coolly. "You're terrible at it. It seems you needed a simple reminder that you and your soul belong to me – not him. In fact, I think I'd better add another one…"

Before she can react, he has her in his arms, and his mouth has dropped to her exposed neck. She hisses as she feels the warm wetness of a tongue laving the delicate skin. It leaves trails of ice in its wake.

"There," he says, pulling back triumphantly. "That should do it."

Frowning, she goes over to her mirror. Her hand flies to her neck. In thick black letters, bold against her white skin, is a familiar motto.

_Draco dormiens numquam titillandus._

"That's – that's the Hogwarts motto," she says blankly, turning to face him.

He smirks. "Yes, I know. It amuses me. I'm in it, after all." He wraps his cloak more tightly around himself. "Stay away from Potter, Hermione. He'll use you up and spit you out until there's nothing else left of you." With that, he's gone.

She realises she's still in the miniskirt and halter-top. Odd; she'd forgotten all about being ashamed of her body. There are bigger things to worry about. She changes into a fresh set of pyjamas and slides into bed.

The last two verses of the poem occur to her just as she's on the verge of sleep, the words drifting across her dreams.

_They tell me I am cursed and I will lose my soul,  
__(O red wind shrieking o'er the thorn-grown dún!)  
__But he is my love and I go to him to-night,  
__Who rides when the thorn glistens white beneath the moon._

_He will call my name and lift me to his breast,  
__(Blow soft O wind 'neath the stars of the south!)  
__I care not for heaven and I fear not hell  
__If I have but the kisses of his proud red mouth._

* * *

**AN: This chapter is dedicated to MissyPrissQueen. I'm glad you like the quotations!**

**Hello all! I hope you enjoyed - please review etc. :) I won't be doing daily updates any more, it'll be every couple of days now, because I seriously do need to work on my dissertation and buff up my CV (since English is not the most employable degree out there...) but I'm always around to reply to reviews and I will do my best to finish the story before I go back to uni in October!**

**Today's chapter quotation is usually attributed to either Mark Twain or J.M. Barrie (_Peter Pan) _but the full version is probably down to a senator in 1885 named Benjamin Wade. The first half of the quotation, relating just to hell for the company, dates back to 1621 in Robert Burton's _The Anatomy of Melancholy _which is a FABULOUS name for a book!**

**The poem is _The Fairy Lover _by Irish poet Moireen Fox (1883-1972). It was anthologised by Padraic Colum in his 1922 _Anthology of Irish Verse _which is where I found it (on Bartleby). Isn't it gorgeous?**


	8. VIII: Thy Heaven Doors are My Hell Gates

**Chapter VIII: Thy Heaven Doors are My Hell Gates**

**(_William Blake_ – The Everlasting Gospel)**

On Friday morning, Hermione wakes up unusually late.

That's hardly a surprise, considering how late she got to bed last night. She gazes at her phone display with bleary eyes. It's nine a.m. – _three whole hours_ after she normally gets up. Her body considers stressing at the upset in routine but she ruthlessly suppresses it.

Now, what woke her up? It was some sort of sound…

The question is answered when the sound recurs. The musical notes of her doorbell trill through the house.

Frowning, Hermione gets up and goes down to the kitchen. There's a small wall display there which shows who's standing on the doorstep, the camera activated when the doorbell is pressed. She is unsurprised by the morning's visitors.

Harry Potter and Ginny and Ron Weasley are on her doorstep.

She considers just pretending to be absent, but then the letterbox is prodded open from the other side.

"We can see you, Hermione!" Harry calls cheerfully. "Let us in!"

She curses silently. The top of her front door consists of frosted glass, and they must have seen the vague blurriness of her figure when she went into the kitchen.

"Coming!" she calls back. "I'll just get dressed first!"

She stops dead as she remembers that she's been dually branded by Draco – first on her wrists with the Malfoy coat-of-arms, next on her neck with the Hogwarts motto. She curses silently. Hiding them from the others is going to be a pain.

And, oh damn, she must stink to high heaven of Draco's scent…

But they've seen her. She can't back out now. Hermione rushes back upstairs and throws on a long-sleeved, high-necked top, ignoring the fact that it's predicted to be thirty degrees today. She considers spritzing on perfume to mask Draco's smell but discards it – that would seem too suspicious, and after all, she knows the Order suspects that the Malfoys are planning something with her but not that she has anything to do with it. She's just an innocent bystander in all of this.

Finally she goes down to open the front door.

"Sorry it took so long," she says apologetically. "I was in my pyjamas."

"You didn't seem like the sort of person who'd have a lie-in," Ron drawls as he follows Harry across the threshold.

"I'm not usually," she says, gritting her teeth. "But I did make some big discoveries last night, so I reckoned I deserved it."

He shrugs easily. "Fair enough."

The three of them follow her into the living room, where a fan has been plugged in to cope with the stifling heat. She flicks it on and settles herself in front of it on a sofa. Ginny, Ron, and Harry drop into the settee opposite, all in a line.

"Anything to drink?" she asks. "We have tea, of course."

"We're good," Ginny says. Her foot, clad in slippers with a five-inch wedge heel, taps restlessly against the floor. "We just dropped by to see how you're doing."

Hermione leans back on the sofa and regards the three demons in front of her.

Well, two demons and a half-blood. The half-blood in question is gazing at her earnestly, hands twisting in his lap. The tattoo on his wrist flashes in and out of sight. Today, Harry is dressed all in white: white T-shirt, white shorts, white trainers. She wonders if he's trying to be ironic.

Ginny is dressed almost exactly as Draco dressed Hermione last night, and she wonders if showing a lot of skin is a demon trait. She's in a similar cropped blue halter-top but she looks much better in it, since her stomach is flat as Flat Stanley and her breasts are small enough to stay up firm and high without a bra. Her white short-shorts rode up when she sat down and Hermione tries to avoid looking at the slim expanse of thigh and calf on display. She knows it'll only send her into a self-destructive spiral of rage, insecurity and jealousy.

Huh. Those are pretty negative emotions. No wonder Draco is damn near obsessed with her.

Ron is in jeans and a black button-up shirt, apparently immune to the blistering heat outside. This time both eyes are visible beneath his longish red hair. His lips are twisted into a scowl.

"You're _still_ absolutely _drenched_ in eau de Malfoy," he says, voice dripping with disgust. "What the fuck is up with that?"

"You still haven't seen Draco around, have you, Hermione?" Harry asks, frowning at her.

She shakes her head. "I don't even know what he looks like," she says.

Ginny lifts up her hand to roughly Ron's neck-height. "About this tall, blond as hell, silver eyes," she says. "Handsome as the devil," she adds thoughtfully, smirking to herself, and Harry rolls his eyes.

"To get back on track, the strength of this scent must mean that he's been hanging around here – probably in your sleep. Lucius can't leave Hell except on a few very limited, very specific occasions, so it's definitely Draco. How odd… he's never shown any interest in a Mu – I mean, a human before. I wonder if his father really did put him up to it?"

Hermione seizes her chance to pump them for answers. "You sound like you know him well," she says probingly, leaning back into the sofa. The wind from the fan tosses strands of brunette hair around her face.

"We do," Harry says. A closed-off expression has dropped onto his face like a mask. His arm tightens around Ginny. "We went to Hogwarts together."

She blinks. "As in, Hogwarts Church?"

"Hogwarts isn't just a church," Ron explains in his laconic voice. "Dumbledore took the name for it from the Hogwarts Scholomance, the school for demons overseen by Hell. Lucius Malfoy is the chief of its board of governors."

Hermione snickers. "Hell has a school with a board of governors? That is hilarious."

"Yeah, it sort of is," Harry says, grinning. "Dumbledore was a headmaster once, before he left to found the Order. Long before our time. When Ron and Ginny and I were there with Malfoy, the head was an awful little man named Dippet." His voice roughens. For the first time, Hermione begins to see echoes of his demonic heritage, evident in the hellfire darkening his eyes to emerald. "Malfoy – he hates me. He hates me for standing up to him. He ruled Hogwarts the moment he stepped foot in it, because nobody could get enough of the Devil's son – except me. I turned down his offer of friendship, and he spent the next five years of our lives making it… well, making it hell."

"He abused his position horrifically," Ginny says, her lip curling.

"That does sound like something a demon would do," Hermione says drily.

"No, but Hermione, he's truly evil," Harry says, voice solemn, leaning forward. His gaze is fixed unblinkingly on her face. "If you ever see him around, stay away and get to the church immediately, where we can protect you."

"I'll bear that in mind," she lies.

"So you're sure he's never contacted you?" Ron grunts out suddenly. His legs are sprawled out lazily, as though he's asleep, but his vivid blue eyes are sharply alert. He's looking at Hermione in a way she deeply dislikes.

"Yes, I'm sure," she says with asperity. "I think I'd know if – if some _blond god_ contacted me, alright? They don't tend to grow on trees!"

Ginny sputters out a laugh. "Blond god?"

"I'm just saying, based on your description," Hermione says stiffly. "The point is that nobody like that whatsoever has tried to communicate with me in any way."

"Well, alright," Harry says. He rises slowly from the sofa. "I'm afraid there's not much we can do to keep him out of your house while you're asleep, but like we said before, he can't hurt you physically." He hesitates. "Just… don't listen to anything he says, okay? He's a liar and a cheat."

Hermione is already well acquainted with that particular aspect of Draco's personality, but she nods and tries not to look too relieved when – after the conversation tails off – they take their leave. Normally she'd have a lot more questions, such as where precisely the three are being educated now if they've left the Hogwarts Scholomance, but the flesh of her inner wrists feels painful and itchy. She can't wait until she can go up and examine them in the privacy of her bedroom.

She can't quite resist a smile as she thinks back to Harry's description of Draco at school, though. _Of course_ he abused his position terribly. She wouldn't expect anything less of him. And, well, she's been bullied enough as a child that she can't deny it's quite exciting for the bully to be on her side for once.

Perhaps that's the wrong choice of words. Draco Malfoy is on no-one's side but his own. But still.

Ron gives her a last piercing look over his shoulder as she ushers him out through the front door, and Hermione wonders what he thinks of her. He seems more bothered by the scent of Malfoy on her than the other two. She'll have to keep a close eye on him.

Finally, blessedly, alone, Hermione races up the stairs to her bedroom, taking them two at a time. As soon as she's in there she drags her sleeves up her arms. The pain has become a dull, stabbing ache, and the itchiness is beginning to drive her insane. As soon as she sees what have become of her wrists, she realises why.

The flesh around the Malfoy crests is bright red and inflamed, like a tattoo, swollen to the touch. Tentatively she runs one fingertip over the pattern, tracing the swooping lines of the coat-of-arms. The pain eases at her touch.

"You called, my pet?"

Hermione shrieks and jumps backwards. _"Draco?"_

Speak of the devil's son and he shall appear. Where a second ago was only empty space on her floor is now standing Draco Malfoy, smirking at her, dressed – unbelievably – like a World War I soldier. Hermione stares incredulously from her wrists to him and back again.

"You're absolutely right," he says, correctly interpreting the wheels moving inside her head. "Those brands are connected directly to me. As soon as you pressed them, I was summoned."

Her eyes narrow. "You forgot to mention this little aspect of them last night, Draco dear," she says venomously.

He grins appreciatively at her tone. "I wouldn't say I _forgot._ More like…left out."

She snorts, but behind the banter her brain is working rapidly. Now that she's recovered from the surprise a realisation has dawned on her. She cannot risk Draco smelling Harry and the Weasleys in her house, so soon after he warned her away from them. She doesn't know quite how strong demon senses are – can he smell them even from upstairs? – but she doesn't want to test it. She needs to get Draco out of her house, now, without incurring suspicion.

There's only one thing she can think of to escape the situation.

"Take me somewhere," she says abruptly. "I'm bored of working on my personal statement. I need a change of scenery, I think. Can you go anywhere in the world with that Apparition thing?"

The mind boggles. London to Albania, in the time it takes to blink.

"Anywhere in the worlds," he corrects. "Where will it be?"

She just needs a location, any location. Hermione opens her mouth and says the first thing that comes into her mind. It surprises her almost as much as it does him.

"Hell," she says. "Take me to Hell. I want to see what it's like – from your perspective."

A broad smile – not smirk – stretches across his face. It quite transforms his handsomeness; he looks open now, younger and more cheerful, lips less cruel. "Excellent choice," he says. "I've been wanting to show you my kingdom for quite some time now."

Not wasting a moment, Hermione hurries over to him and grasps his uniformed arm. He _tsks_ and shakes her off.

"Not this time," he says. "This particular journey is undertaken with a kiss."

Hermione rolls her eyes. "Please. How stupid do you think I am?"

"I don't think you want me to answer that question," he says, mock-seriously. She punches his stomach with all her strength. Turns out that hitting demonic muscles is like hitting concrete; he laughs as she shakes out her fist with a hissed curse.

"Oh, alright then, a kiss it is," she says impatiently. They need to get out of her house now, she doesn't have time to waste debating methods of transport with him.

Besides, it's not as though their last kiss was _bad._

She ignores the victorious gleam in his eye as she reaches up and cradles his face in both hands. The brutal line of his jaw is unmarred by stubble. His skin is cold as always, but it's refreshingly cold in this awful heat: she could touch it forever. Without giving him a chance to react, she stands on tiptoe and brings her lips to his.

It's softer than their first kiss, more teasing. He barely even lets her inside his mouth. Focused on running her tongue over the tips of his still-human teeth, Hermione is only vaguely aware of her room falling away and another room reforming itself around her.

She _is_ aware of the disappearance of her clothes though.

"Draco!" Hermione snaps, jumping away. "Seriously?"

He lets out an odd, growling laugh as she stares down at her body. She's totally naked. Totally. Not even her knickers and bra are still on. Everything is laid out: her breasts, far less firm than a seventeen-year-old's should be, with unfashionably large aureoles; the bulge of her stomach; the acne on her lower back.

She should be panicking and passing out at him seeing her this way. And she would be, if her attention hadn't been caught by the fact that Draco himself has turned into a real live demon.

She takes him in, her jaw dropped. The Devil's son has shot up another foot in height. He towers over her now, casting a long shadow over her nude body. He's as naked as she is and his alabaster skin has turned a muted red colour, somehow not an unappealing shade as it ripples over defined musculature. She hastily averts her gaze from the long, thick red cock dangling against his thigh. Is it – no, it can't possibly be hardening…

To escape it she looks up high into his face. Although his shoulders have broadened to balance out his new height, the rest of his face is more or less unchanged. He's still recognisably Draco, and the realisation calms her slightly. She can deal with the fact that his eyes have become pure black, both the iris and whites. She can deal with how all his teeth have lengthened and the canines turned into fangs, just as they did when they first kissed. He's still her Draco.

"Like what you see?" he drawls. The voice is the same too, just rougher and harder. The sound unaccountably makes her skin tingle.

"I take it this is your Hell form," she says.

He nods. A pair of twisting horns curve out from his hair, which is still an incongruous white-blond that makes her giggle.

"My demonic form," he confirms. "Accessible also on earth when I'm angry… or horny. Hence why you're already partially familiar with it."

She rolls her eyes at him. "Did we have to be naked?" It's ridiculously difficult to keep her eyes from straying to his dick, and his eyes are shamelessly attached to her breasts. He offers her a wicked grin.

"Of course we didn't _have_ to be naked, my pet. I _wanted_ us to be."

"What a surprise," she mutters. He hasn't run screaming from the room at the sight of her naked body. In fact, defying all explanation, he seems to actually enjoy the sight. This awareness gives her the confidence she needed to finally take in her first sight of Hell.

Predictably, her first sight of Hell is Draco's bedroom.

It's obviously his. It's huge, three or four times the size of hers, with a huge four-poster bed in one corner and a desk under wide sash windows. Everything is either green, silver, or black. A huge painting of the Malfoy crest decorates one silvery wall.

"I should have guessed this is the part of Hell we'd end up in," she says, though without much rancour. She's too busy examining his room.

"Of course," he murmurs. "I thought you'd like to see the place you'll be spending so much of your time in the future."

"I – oh!" She looks down at herself again. She seems to be glowing, faintly, a dull golden colour, like a mist rising from her skin and caressing her limbs. "What's this?"

He gives her a wolfish smile, exposing those daggerlike teeth. "That," he says, "is your living soul. A sign that you alone of all in Hell are neither dead nor demon."

"Ah," she says, only a little weakly.

Her soul. The very thing she and Draco have been debating possession of. And now, here is it – and here she is – right in the heart of his kingdom.

* * *

**AN: Hi! We're a little more than halfway through this story now, and things will be heating up in the next chapters ;) Don't forget to review if you enjoyed, please!**

**Also, some people have expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that I made all the demons beautiful. I won't lie, I really enjoyed making Ron handsome... I know it's very reminiscent of the early 2010s vampire novels, but I make no apology for that - I did really enjoy some of those novels! But mostly I made this choice because a demon's entire job is to tempt humans, and their attractiveness is part of that. **

**As you'll have noticed, this particular Hermione is a lot darker than canon one. Or at least, I sort of think this is what canon Hermione might have been like, if she hadn't befriended Harry (and Ron, though he was mean about her) and just spent her whole life friendless. We know Hermione can be unscrupulous when she wants to be. Thoughts on this characterisation?**


	9. IX: Better to Reign in Hell

**Chapter IX: Better to Rule in Hell than Serve in Heaven**

**(****_John Milton_**** – Paradise Lost)**

Hermione determinedly strives to maintain an even tone and demeanour. "Draco, give us clothes," she orders imperiously.

"It's funny how you've become so much bossier with me over time," he muses. "Do I not scare you anymore?"

"You never scared me," she half-lies.

He sees straight through it, of course. "Bullshit," he snickers. "Remember what you were like the first time we met? Screaming all over the place… Fainting and moaning…" He lets out a sigh of theatrical longing. "Ah, those were the days."

"I did not _faint,"_ she says acidly. "And you'll forgive me for screaming, considering I thought I'd just watched someone get murdered right in front of my eyes."

He laughs, long and deep. The sound makes the muscles of his throat and chest flex invitingly. Hermione can't help but notice.

He notices her noticing. "You know, my pet," he purrs, "I can't help but think you don't actually _want_ me to be covered up." Casually he skims his hand down his front and scratches, perilously close to his groin.

She refuses to be baited. Hermione Granger has more self-control than that. One measly little demon boy is not going to get the better of her.

"Clothes, Draco," she barks. "Now."

He groans with exaggerated disappointment but does as she commands. Hermione feels material settle over her and nods approvingly.

The approval vanishes when she sees what she's actually wearing. This time it's not a halter-top and miniskirt; instead, he's put her in a dress which comes to mid-thigh but is made entirely of black lace, meaning she might as well not be wearing anything anyway. He's given her a pair of matching lacy black underwear – clearly visible beneath the dress – but left her braless, so the darkness of her aureoles is similarly apparent. Since the dress is strapless all three of her brands are stark against her pale skin.

Somewhat to Hermione's surprise, he's clothed himself too, but only in pair of loose jeans which hang off his hips. She blinks at the lean definition of his chest. Why on earth – or rather, why the hell – is his red skin so attractive? Is it a demonic thing?

"I hope you're satisfied now," he says sulkily, sounding like a small boy who's been deprived of a favourite toy. She bites back an inappropriate snort of laughter.

"Honestly, Draco, I don't know what you sound so annoyed about, because if this is what you call clothes –"

She breaks off with a shriek as a resounding _clap_ echoes through the room. A puff of smoke billows into existence in front of her. When it clears, she's left staring at the oddest creature she's ever seen. No more than three feet high, it has light green skin and bulbous yellow eyes, with huge, pointed ears that poke out from its head. It seems to be dressed in the ragged remains of an old and yellowed pillowcase.

"Ah, Dobby," Draco says lazily. "What is it?"

The creature bows so low in his direction that its forehead touches the floor.

"Mistress Narcissa is wishing to see you, master," it croaks out. "Mistress Narcissa is sensing you are home."

"Ah, excellent," he says briskly. "You can go now, Dobby. Come along, Hermione. This is perfect, I can introduce you to my mother now!"

The creature vanishes with another ear-splitting pop and Hermione finally finds her voice.

"What the hell was that?" she gasps.

"A house-elf," Draco says, smirking. "One of Hell's beasts, but the absolute lowest form. Incapable of turning against its master."

She swallows. This is the first truly Hellish creature she's seen. Yes, Draco is in his demonic form, but she's so comfortable with him now that it doesn't even seem like a big deal. But the house-elf's appearance is beginning to hammer home to her the fact that this is real. She truly is on another plane of existence.

Then the rest of what he said begins to penetrate.

"Your mother?" she says incredulously. "I'm not meeting your mother!"

He frowns. "Why not? She's a lovely woman!"

"I'm sure she is, but meeting the wife of the Devil wasn't exactly on my agenda for today," she snaps.

"Coming to Hell with me wasn't on your agenda for today either, and yet here you are," he points out. "Hermione, it'll be fine. Mother will love you."

"I can't meet her dressed like this!" she says frantically. "Even you must have enough – I don't know, morals or whatever, to see that!"

When she says the word _morals,_ Draco starts laughing so hard that he has to stagger over to his bed and sit down. She waits with rising irritation for several minutes but the flood of chuckles shows no sign of abating. Finally she stomps over and twists one of his ear.

"Ow!" he gasps, still sniggering. "Ow – that was so unnecessary, Hermione – oh, that was so funny…"

"What was so funny?" she asks, incensed.

"You'll see eventually," he says, at last getting to his feet. He wipes one last tear of pure laughter from his eye. "Alright now, you have a choice: walk there, or be carried there. Choose quickly or I'll choose for you."

"Walk," she says quickly. Draco might be forcing her to meet his mother against her will, but she can at least arrive there with her dignity intact.

"Carrying it is!" he says cheerfully, and before Hermione quite knows what's happened Draco has swung her up, one arm under her knees and the other behind her back in a bridal-style carry. She hisses with surprise and a tiny bit of panic. At his new height, she's a long way from the ground. She pushes more firmly into his hold, cheek pressed against his chest.

"Don't you dare drop me," she says warningly.

In response he nuzzles the hair at the very top of her head. "Wouldn't dream of it."

They exit his room and begin the journey to wherever Narcissa is. Hermione quickly realises they're in a castle; the walls and floor are solid stone, broken up only by rugs and tapestries, and there are suits of armour in fantastical non-human body shapes situated in plinths along their path. She can't deny that she's beginning to enjoy this. In Hell, Draco's skin is finally a normal temperature, and she snuggles her head into the cosy hollow between his arm and chest as she takes in her new surroundings.

She does notice one thing though: there are no windows.

They reach a pair of wide golden doors maybe ten feet high. "This is the throne room," Draco explains. "Father's out right now, and Mother likes spending her time in here if he's absent."

"You should let me down now," Hermione says, trying to wriggle out of his grasp.

His arms tighten, preventing movement. "Stop squirming," he mutters. "It feels way too good, and not even demons want to face their mothers with erections." Grinning at her frozen expression, he drops a fleeting kiss onto the tip of her nose and goes to push the doors open.

The throne room is long and golden. Everything about it gleams painfully bright, from the black marble floor to the gold torches flaming in gold brackets. A strange repetitive whistling sound is assaulting Hermione's ears. Narrowing her eyes against the illumination, she takes in her first sight of the Devil's wife.

Narcissa Malfoy is standing at the far end of the room. Her hair, as blonde as her son's and husband's, ripples down her back in a long, shining sheet that almost hurts to look at. Unlike Draco, she's still in human form, her skin fair and lips pink. Eyes the grey of evening storm clouds are set in face of arrogant beauty, extraordinarily resembling Sirius Black's. The only obvious sign of her nature is a pair of delicate knifelike fangs extending towards her pointed chin.

She's standing before two people hunched over kneeling at her feet. Hermione's breath catches when she sees that their bare backs are split open almost to the bone, perfuming the air with the acrid scent of blood. Their foreheads are pressed against the ground so it's impossible to see their faces.

In one of Narcissa's hands is a whip.

Her head jerks up at their entrance and she lets out a high-pitched scream of what sounds like pure joy.

_"Draco!"_

She leaps towards them. Hermione's eyes goggle. Narcissa's upper half is clothed in nothing more than crisscrossing straps of black silk, weaving around her arms and torso and leaving almost all her skin bare. The effect against her white skin is dazzling. Her black leather leggings hug every line of her long, slim legs, until they disappear into a pair of knee-high black boots with a five-inch stiletto heel.

Hermione swallows. Somehow, she hadn't expected a Bondage Barbie out of Lucius Malfoy's wife. At least she feels less self-conscious about her transparent lacy dress now, and how Narcissa can see her breasts and knickers.

"Hello, Mother," Draco says laconically. He finally puts Hermione down, and she watches as Narcissa smacks a kiss onto both of his cheeks. "Having a good time?"

"Just amusing myself with a pair of murderers," Narcissa says brightly. With a jolt, Hermione realises she's referring to the two kneeling figures. Murderers? They must be dead souls taking their punishment in Hell. Any sympathy she might have had for them flees.

"Mother, this is Hermione Granger," Draco says. "The Mudblood girl who summoned Father."

"Oh?" Narcissa says. She darts a lightning-fast glace first at Hermione, then at her son. "Is that so?"

There's something distinctly communicative in the look that passes between the two Malfoys. Hermione coughs. This might be Hell, but she's still filled with the impulse to make a good impression.

This is sort of like meeting a boyfriend's mother, isn't it? If Draco were her boyfriend and his mother weren't a demoness.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs Malfoy," she says, holding out her hand.

"Narcissa, please," she says, taking it in the hand that isn't holding a whip. "So wonderful to meet a Mudblood smart enough to summon Lucius! Why, it's been fifty years since that last happened!"

The ever-present curiosity rises up once more in Hermione like a striking snake. "Who was the last to summon him?" she asks.

"Oh, Tom Riddle," Narcissa says easily. "Quite too clever for his own good…"

Now, where has she heard that name before? "Tom Riddle? As in, the Dark Lord of dead souls?" she says, blinking.

"Indeed," Narcissa says, wrapping the tails of the whip around one slender wrist. Casually she snaps it over heads of the two murderers. "But he wasn't the Dark Lord then. He was a little human boy who wanted to never die. So Lucius granted his wish – he'll never die, but nor can he walk the world of the living, since he isn't alive." She laughs uproariously, as though that's a huge joke.

Hermione gulps. She'd almost forgotten that her entire liaison with Draco started because of the favour she asked Lucius. How will the Devil twist hers?

"Draco, have you shown Hermione around the realm yet?" Narcissa asks.

"Not yet," he says. "I'm about to give her the grand tour."

"You do that," she says, attention falling back to her whip. "Show her all around the kingdom! I'll be seeing you later, Hermione Granger."

It sounds more like a promise than a farewell, but Hermione manages her own goodbye before Narcissa returns to setting the whip into human flesh and bone.

Draco snakes his hand into hers as they approach the entrance to the castle itself. Hermione doesn't shake him off. In such an alien world, his familiar touch is comforting.

"So, that was your mother," she says, a smile pulling up the corner of her lips.

"That was my mother," he agrees. "Narcissa Black, daughter of a High Lord of Hell, wife of the Devil. An impressive array of titles, isn't it?"

"Your mother is certainly impressive," she says fervently. "I can see where you get your looks from." A moment too late, she realises what she's just said and flushes furiously as Draco laughs. "I mean – that is – you're a demon, you know you're good-looking, it's an objective truth that means nothing to me personally," she finishes, lamely and untruthfully.

"You know, Hermione, if you say a big enough lie you'll end up here in Hell with me anyway," he says, smirking as they emerge from the castle.

She's prevented from replying by the fact that her jaw has dropped.

The castle is on a hill, and Hell is spread out under them, a vast land of red and black spreading as far as the eye can see. The rolling plains that would be green on earth are bright red here, and the winding lines of rivers are made of black lava rather than blue water. In the distance crouches a collection of fanglike mountains. Fires are burning everywhere: big ones and small ones alike, sending up thin plumes of smoke into the twilight-coloured sky. Surprisingly the temperature is not that hot: maybe twenty degrees. There's a village at the bottom of the hill where the houses are carved from grey stone and ash.

"That's Hogsmeade," Draco says, pointing at it. "Over there in those mountains is the Hogwarts Scholomance. Want to go down and explore?"

"Hell, yes," she breathes, making him chuckle.

He flips her into his arms again for the descent down the hill, since the path is steep and rocky. She doesn't even pretend not to be enjoying the ride. But they're soon at the base of the hill and here, she insists on walking herself, making him grumble but comply. He doesn't let go of her hand as they pick their way into the village.

It's full of demons.

Hermione forces back dizziness at the realisation. Some are in their demonic forms like Draco, others appear human like Narcissa, but one thing is clear: they're demons, dressed in scanty scraps of fabric – though none are actually naked – and most retain demonic characteristic even in human form, with fangs and horns flashing at her everywhere. All do a double-take when they see the golden life glow of her skin. But she's not afraid: when they see Draco, a menacing hulk at her side, they prudently let their attention slide elsewhere.

The rush of power is _incredible._ Hermione has never been either well-liked or well-feared, so the experience of crowds parting for her passage is a novel and thrilling one. The fact that Draco is by her side, making droll observations as they go, just makes it all even better.

"That's the Three Broomsticks," he says as they pass what looks like a pub. "Does great Butterbeer… if you want a drink?" He's leering at her, and she sighs with mock frustration.

"Alright, hit me with it. What happens if I drink it? I turn into a tree?"

"Nothing so permanent," he says silkily. "You just have to stay in Hell forever if you do."

She nods. "Ah, the old Underworld stuff. Consume the produce of Hades and be trapped there, as Persephone discovered."

He groans. "Why have I picked the cleverest Mudblood to corrupt, again?"

"Because you like a challenge," she says teasingly, and something inside her cold heart warms at how his mouth hooks into a smile at her words.

Time for a change of subject. "So, if this is Hell, where are the sinners being punished?" she says. She gestures at the demons hurrying past them. "I mean, this is nice, but it's hardly what I expected."

"Sinners are punished in the flames," he says. "Let me take you to the one nearest Hogsmeade and show you."

They leave behind the long, cobbled street of shops, which gives way to another red plain. On closer inspection Hermione can see that the grass itself is that hue. Interesting. She wonders what the scientific classification of that particular plant would be.

A tendril of smoke twining into the air alerts them that a fire is near, and they come across a mid-sized bonfire burning in the middle of one of the fields. Her eyes widen. Inside the fire is standing a demon in full demonic form, seven feet tall and with teeth like a shark, armed with a trident. A human being is lying facedown under its prongs, writhing on the ground. The smell of singed flesh is choking.

"What did… what did they do?" she asks Draco, jerking her head at the human. It seems to be a woman: she has long dark hair that's being buffeted by tongues of flame as she arches her back.

He glances at the spectacle with disinterest. "Torturer of animals, I think," he says. The demon inside the fire lifts up the trident again and plunges it one more into the woman's back. Hermione cringes then realises something.

"Why can't we hear anything? No screaming?"

"Each of these Azkaban flames is surrounded by a shield of silence," he explains. "Obviously, we don't want Hell to be constantly filled with shrieking or we'd never be able to hear ourselves think."

Hermione nods. She's gazing at the scene in horrified fascination, wincing slightly every time the demon stabs the sinning soul once more. She knits her brows together as she notices something else through the haze of smoke. Her mouth falls open.

"Draco, is that what I think it is?"

He squints through the smoke. "Well," he says, "if you think that's two demons fucking, then it's exactly what you think it is."

Hermione runs around the bonfire to the other side, dragging Draco along behind her by the hand. He's right. On the ground right at the edge of the flames, so close its heat is caressing their faces, are a pair of demons copulating furiously. The male on top is in demon form, skin slate grey; the woman under him looks human but for the horns curving out from her head, which whips furiously from side to side in the throes of passion. The fact that someone is getting tortured not five feet away doesn't appear to be mattering whatsoever.

"Oh, my," Hermione says faintly, unable to look away.

"Azkaban flames are often considered an aphrodisiac by my kind," he says, amused. "Getting turned on, my pet?"

"No," she says defiantly. It's sort of true. The sight isn't even half as erotic as Draco was when she saw him naked an hour ago.

He doesn't look like he believes her, but decides not to argue and starts leading her back to Hogsmeade instead. It's not the easiest thing in the world to be holding the hand of someone more than a foot taller than her, though Hermione doesn't mind. The dirt path has trip-worthy pebbles strewn all over it and the trees lining either side are tall and thorny.

She comes to a halt as they pass a wide black lake. "Can we sit for a while?" she asks. It's surprisingly pretty; every so often the hard surface breaks to release plumes of leaping flame, like a geyser but with fire instead of hot water.

"Of course," he says. They settle on the red grass at the edge of the lake, a safe distance away from any stray sparks. Hermione doesn't argue when Draco pulls her into his lap. She curls up against his chest like a cat, resting her head on his shoulder. They sit for a long while in companionable silence together.

She's never sat like with anyone before. With a… friend, maybe.

Eventually her pillow rumbles when he speaks.

"So," he says. "This is Hell. What do you think of it?"

"It's surprisingly beautiful," she says honestly. She leans away so she can look him in the eye. It's somewhat odd, to be seeing pure-black eyes like drops of darkness in his pale face, but thrillingly so.

"If only you damned yourself," he says, "you could spend eternity here with me."

She reaches up to play with a lock of his blond hair, so incongruous with that red skin. "I don't know about _damning_ myself, Draco. I mean, I don't want to end up being punished in one those Azkaban flames."

He shakes his head impatiently. "You wouldn't be. I'm a Malfoy. We make the rules around here."

That certainly eases one of her worries. But still. "I'm seventeen, Draco. And eternity is a very long time. I don't think I'm old enough to be making any decisions on my afterlife quite yet." Something occurs to her. "Speaking of age… how old are you exactly, Draco? I mean, you look like you're about my age, but I assume demons can live together unless they're killed by the Order via that mysterious method you won't tell me about, so…" She waits expectantly.

His sharp teeth flash white when he laughs. "Blessed iron. We can be killed using blessed iron, as happens when dipped in holy water by any layperson," he says. "And to answer your question, I'm sixteen."

Hermione gasps. "_You're only sixteen_?"

"Yes," he says, an eyebrow raising. "Problem with that?"

She looks around wildly as though they have an audience, though the place is deserted. "You're – you're so young! You're practically a baby!"

He growls at her. "Want to say that again, my pet?"

"You're like… my boy toy," she says, beginning to giggle hysterically. "Hermione Granger with a younger man… oh, my God, if the girls at school got wind of me dating a boy from the year below who's not even done his GCSEs they'd _die_ laughing…"

A snarl vibrates in Draco's throat. The next moment the world has upended itself around her. When she's recovered from the dizziness she realises that he's whirled her off his lap, she's lying back on the ground, and he's on his elbows over her, lips locked to hers.

She reacts instantly. Her hands reach up to his shoulders to pull him closer, until there isn't even enough space between their bodies for air to lick through. He must have shrunk some of this teeth, since her tongue isn't ribbons by now; she takes advantage of this to explore his mouth fully, her legs wrapping around his waist, throwing herself into Draco Malfoy.

They kiss, and kiss, and _kiss._ Hermione needs air desperately but can't detach herself for long enough to breathe. The taste of blood is in her mouth and at first she assumes he's bitten her: the realisation that she was the one who bit him, her teeth sinking into his bottom lip and sucking, sends arousal racing through her veins. She moans into his mouth.

"Your room," she manages to pant out. "Take me – back to your room."

They're there before she can even finish her sentence, the Apparition only adding to her general feeling of disorientation. She's on her back in Draco's massive bed with the Devil's son between her legs. With a single swipe of his claws he rips the lace dress from neckline to hem. It splits open to reveal her breasts, tipped with pebbled nipples, and knickers that show more than they conceal.

He sits back on his haunches to drink her in. His expression is dark and greedy.

Hermione's head clears slightly. She clears her throat. "I, uh, haven't done this before. I think I'd prefer you in human form, for the first time anyway."

For a moment she thinks he's too focused on her body to have heard her, but then she sees that the redness of his skin is receding to white once more, fangs vanishing and horns shrinking. Soon he looks like the boy she first saw at the surgery.

"Better?" he asks. His voice is still a demonic rasp, and he has to clear his throat too before it goes back to a huskier version of its normal tone.

"Much," she says, offering him a relieved smile. "So. Let's do this, shall we?"

He laughs. "I told you you'd be begging me to bring you to bed one day."

Her outraged response vanishes into his kiss.

* * *

**AN: AND that's a wrap for this week! This was a big chapter so I'd really love it if you reviewed! (though I probably say that every chapter lol) **

**No but seriously let me know what you thought of the events in this one! I haven't decided if I'm going to try writing a full-on demon sex scene yet... we shall see...**

**UPDATED TO SAY THAT I WENT TO HARRY POTTER STUDIOS YESTERDAY AND IT WAS SOOO GOOD! I have pics if anyone is interested :)**


	10. X: The Devil to Pay

**Chapter X: The Devil to Pay**

**(proverbial)**

Draco begins by suckling on one of Hermione's nipples, blond head bent over her chest, those long clever fingers toying with the nipple not currently receiving his tongue's ministrations. She lets out a shaky breath. That certainly does feel nice, and it's one of the things she can't do to her own body. But it doesn't feel _earth-shattering._ Nor is she expecting anything they do today to be earth-shattering: research has indicated to her that for girls, losing one's virginity is generally an unenjoyable process.

She doubts that having one's lover be a demon will change that.

He begins to suck harder, switching nipples, and she gasps when his teeth bite down sharply. The lightning bolt of pain arrows straight to her pussy, where it softens into pleasure. She moans gutturally. Her hands spread over his bare back, trying to pull him up, but he resists.

"Not this time," he rasps. "I promise I'll let you do everything you want to me later, but for now, _I'm_ in charge." And he follows that up with another bite that leaves her quite unable to argue.

After what feels like hours of cupping and kneading her breasts, alternating laving each tip, his hand skims down to the waistband of her knickers. He doesn't try to peel them off. Instead, he rubs her in circles over the material. That feels _way_ better than anything he was doing to her breasts and she writhes, moving her hips restlessly into his touch, looking for more. It takes a while for the pleasure to crest but he seems tireless in its pursuit; his fingers never let up as they grind into her clit, varying pressure and speed, until at last she falls over the edge with a moan. A rush of wetness slickens her thighs.

"There we go," he mutters, voice thick with lustful satisfaction.

She should feel embarrassed at just how long it took her to climax. His wrist must be aching. But if it is, he gives no sign of it; instead, he starts trailing sucking kisses down her neck and over her collarbone, paying particular attention to the Hogwarts motto tattooed there. Simultaneously he reaches down to slide off her knickers. She blushes at how her arousal makes the fabric stick to her opening until he pulls it away with a low laugh.

"One day soon," he says, "I'm going to spend hours licking you. Fucking hours. But not today." He toes off his jeans in a single economical movement and then he's pressed up against her – right against her – his hardness a solid weight against her thigh. Just the very tip slips inside her. He doesn't feel much smaller when he's in human form compared to his demon form, and she swallows.

"Well, what are you waiting for, a gilded invitation?" she snaps, trying to cover up the nerves with aggression.

He rolls his eyes. "Excuse me for trying to savour the fucking moment," he says. "But if the lady wants more…"

He pushes in, all the way to the hilt.

Unconsciously, Hermione bares her teeth at the pinching pain as never-before-used muscles are stretched uncomfortably. She feels… full. Stuffed full. She wiggles experimentally on his cock, wondering if this is what a piece of tandoori chicken on a skewer feels like. Immediately she orders her brain to shut up.

The wiggling movement feels good so she does it again. And again.

"I know I'm a virgin and all, but I was under the impression that sex consisted of you moving as well, not just me," she says snidely when Draco seems content to remain sheathed inside her.

_"Were_ a virgin," he corrects through gritted teeth. "And you're really bloody mouthy for a girl sitting on my dick right now, you know that? I think I'm going to have to do something about that."

She starts to scoff, but it ends in a choke when he pulls out and drives all the way back in again. He sets a fast pace, hips snapping back and forth – it takes a while for her to realise that the high-pitched whining noise she can hear is her, not him, groaning as he thrusts deeper than her fingers could ever reach. At one point he slows down to smirk down at her.

"That enough movement for you?"

She snarls at him, her face bathed in sweat, and he laughs before snaking his hand between their intertwined bodies to reach the bundle of nerves between her thighs. She doesn't come again – the burn of her muscles after losing her virginity, plus his punishing pace, is a little too much for that – but she certainly enjoys the stimulation until he collapses on her body with a grunt. The rush of his release jerks inside her. It's a very odd yet pleasant sensation, and when he tries to roll off her she locks her legs around his waist to stop him.

"I'll squash you," he protests.

She shakes her head. "I like feeling you inside me."

He turns them onto their sides so he's spooning her, cock still within her body. Hermione lets out a sigh of satisfaction and promptly falls asleep.

* * *

She wakes what feels like several hours later. Draco is no longer nestled inside her: they've moved until he's flat on his back and she's half lying on top of him, head on his chest. He has no heartbeat. It's really not the strangest discovery she's made all day.

A realisation slams into her with the force of a lorry.

"Oh my God!" Hermione shrieks, shooting upright. "My parents! I need to get home to my parents or they'll kill me!"

Draco's eyes blink open. They're back to silver.

"No need to worry, my pet," he says languidly. "I can just wipe their memories of the day right now and implant false ones. They'll have no recollection they couldn't find you."

She hesitates, then finally nods. After all, she reasons, it's not as though it'll hurt them.

His eyes close in concentration for a moment, then open again. The deed is done. Hermione returns to her original position, and Draco loops his arm around her back. She feels energised after her long nap. Questions are bubbling up in her brain again, demanding to be asked.

"So," she says. "What's it like growing up in Hell as the son of the Devil?"

"Pretty bloody awesome, for the most part," he says. "I suppose you could compare it to being… the son of the Prime Minister. Only he's unelected, he'll rule forever, and he puts his enemies in burning vats of oil instead of gaol." He snickers.

Hermione hums thoughtfully. "Your mother is lovely, but not exactly what I was expecting," she admits. "I thought she'd be less… I don't know, friendly."

He's drawing aimless patterns on her skin with the tips of his nails. She shivers at the sensation.

"My parents struggled to conceive me," he explains. "Purebloods aren't, in general, very fertile, with the exception of blood traitors who seem to breed like rabbits, and I'm their only child. Theo was joking when he said they deny me nothing, but he wasn't exactly wrong."

He certainly has that indefinable air of familial adoration around him. "Must be nice," she says jealously.

"You're an only child too," he points out, eyebrow raised. "Shouldn't you be able to empathise?"

Hermione is silent for a long time, rubbing one lock of her hair over Draco's ridged abdomen, before she speaks. "My parents do love me," she says slowly. "They just have very high expectations, and I know a little bit of love would be chipped away if I couldn't meet them. They'd never admit it – but I'd know. Do you ever wish you had a sibling?"

"When I was younger, I used to pretend Theo was my brother," he confesses. "My parents love me so much, but they love each other more, and it does get… lonely."

She nods. Out of all the countless things she knows, loneliness is the one she knows best.

"This is a depressing line of conversation," he says abruptly, sitting up. "How about we turn our minds to more pleasant things now?"

Without waiting for a response, he rolls her under him and starts kissing her ravenously, one hand already sliding down to her slit. She parts her legs eagerly. He's halfway to entering her when –

"Draco, darling!" Narcissa trills as his bedroom door slams open. "Are you and Hermione hungry? Dobby's just been out collecting the pumpkin blood!"

Hermione yelps and tries instantly to kick Draco off her, dragging a sheet over her nudity at the same time. He sighs and wriggles into a sitting position.

"Honestly, Mother, haven't I told you to knock before?"

"Don't be silly, Draco, you haven't got anything I didn't give birth to," she says cheerfully. A vivid scarlet splatter of blood mars one perfect cheek, but aside from that she's still flawless. Meanwhile, Hermione has Draco's cum dripping down her thighs and hair sticking to her forehead with sweat.

She lets out a high-pitched whine of pure embarrassment and buries her face in her hands.

"Mother, you're embarrassing Hermione," Draco says, scowling at Narcissa. She favours Hermione with a wide shark smile.

"Dearest, please don't concern yourself! This is hardly the first time I've caught Draco having sex – more like the twentieth. You think he'd learn to lock the door…" Shaking her head, she addresses her son. "Come down to the dining hall once you're finished, darling. I'll have the house-elves set the goblets out."

With that, thankfully, she departs, although she doesn't bother to shut the door behind her.

Draco yawns and turns back to Hermione, more than ready to pick up where they left off. He frowns when she sees that her hands are still over her face.

"Hermione? Are you alright?"

Cautiously he goes to peel her palms off her cheeks. The moment he makes contact with her, she lashes out, lifting her head to reveal eyes burning with pure rage.

"The _twentieth time_ she's caught you fucking a girl in your bedroom?" she snarls. "The twentieth fucking time!"

He edges back subtly. "Hermione, she was obviously exaggerating –"

"But you've done this before, haven't you!" Her voice is an enraged scream, and she gets onto her knees, panting with fury.

"I never said I hadn't," he snaps back. His own temper, never far from the surface, is rising. "What have I done wrong? I'm a bloody demon, Hermione, what did you expect? That I'd be a bloody virgin too?"

She roars and bares her teeth at him, renewed rage rushing through her when she remembers that she's only showing him flat, harmless human teeth, not the vicious fangs. She isn't totally sure what's come over her. But she does know that a toxic combination of anger, embarrassment, and jealousy is racing through her veins, and that she – who prides herself on her control – has lost it.

Contrarily, seeing her intense fury seems to calm Draco down a little.

"Hermione, whoever I fucked was before I met you," he says placatingly. "You're the one I'm making the Devil's daughter-in-law, not them."

This news shatters the last remaining vestiges of her control, and possibly sanity. "_What the fuck_?" Hermione shrieks. "The Devil's _what?_ When the hell did you give me a proposal? Because I didn't bloody hear one!"

He looks astonished. She wonders how false it is. "You – you had sex with me! In Hell, no less! A demon and a human consummating a contract – and sexual consummation is the most binding, most permanent type a demon can do. I thought you understood what you were getting into."

"I'm seventeen, you imbecile," she hisses. "I'm not marrying anyone, least of all someone I'm only the _twentieth notch on the bedpost for_. Take. Me. Home."

He stares at her. Slowly, a dark crimson stain floods his irises.

"Very well," he says. His voice is ice. He reaches out to grab her wrist in a bruising grip, and within the next blink they're back in her bedroom at home, both still naked as the day they were born. As soon as they arrive she tries to jerk out of his hold, but he remains clasping her, hand like a vice around her bones.

"Not that you deserve the warning," he says frostily, "but I want this to prey on your mind. I'm the one who spilt your virgin's blood, Hermione Granger. You're a clever girl; you've read _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_. You know exactly what that means. I have rights and magics over you which nobody else will ever have. And, Hermione?" He smiles, but it's terrifying, a cold curl of his lips utterly devoid of humour. It exposes the needle points of his teeth. "I fully intend to exercise them. I have no intention of letting you escape me. See you in Hell, my love."

She opens her mouth to deliver a scathing report, but then he's gone, releasing her wrist and Apparating away. She furiously rubs the imprint of his fingers on her wrist just above the Malfoy crest. _Nobody_ talks to her like that. Nobody gets the better of her. Not even the son of the Devil.

Crookshanks meows urgently at her from her bed but she ignores him. Without even bothering to shower the demon's seed out of her body, she lunges to where her phone is charging and dials a number. Ginny picks up on the second ring.

"Hermione?" she says in surprise. "Is everything alright?"

Eyesight almost hazing with rage, she says, "Ginny, there's something I need to tell you."

* * *

**AN: PLEASE VOTE:**

**So it turns out I lied when I said Friday was a wrap for this week... BECAUSE I'VE FINISHED WRITING THIS GODDAMN STORY! Minus the epilogue. So you can expect daily updates for the next few days! (Yes, I take gratitude in reviews, thanks for asking :P)**

**And that means it's time for me to ask you guys about which of my two main story ideas I should write next, after I finish the last chapter and epilogue of _To Kingdom Come._**

**1) _The Quick and the Damned_: ****When her foster brother Severus is condemned to the Hogwarts School for Incurably Criminal Boys for a crime he didn't commit, Lily Evans is forced to disguise herself as a boy and go after him. There, she comes face-to-face with the worst elements of human nature - and none are worse than James Potter, the vicious ruler of them all. Dark Jily Muggle AU. If you've read my first-ever fanfic _Him and Her _(cough .nerd cough) this would have a similar dynamic to that one!**

**2) _The Liar's Kiss_: Hidden high in the mountains of Scotland is the Hogwarts School, a training ground for future MI6 agents...with magical powers. When she's recruited against her will, Hermione Granger finds herself the biggest minnow in a pool full of sharks. And biggest among them is Draco Malfoy, who's determined to see her dead - or worse, expelled. Dramione spy AU. **


	11. XI: We are Each Our Own Devils

**Chapter XI: We are Each Our Own Devil, and We Make this World Our Hell**

**_(Oscar Wilde _****– ****The Duchess of Padua)**

Hermione makes her voice soft and fragile, heavily tinged with fear bordering on terror. "Ginny, I'm so, so, sorry, but I have to tell you. I can't bear it anymore. It's – it's driving me insane. I have to tell you…"

Safe in the knowledge that Ginny can't see her, she manages a creditable imitation of a sob.

"What do you have to tell me? Ginny demands, voice rising with impatience.

She audibly draws in a breath. "Don't hate me, please, okay? I had no choice, he threatened me, he threatened my family –"

"Who did?" Ginny practically yells.

"Draco Malfoy," Hermione whispers.

There's a dead silence on the other end of the line. Hermione rushes to fill it.

"He's been bothering me for days – following me around, making me _see_ things, taunting me, mocking me, trying to get me to do – bad things… I really really wanted to tell you, but he said he'd kill my parents if I told a soul."

"We told you multiple times that Draco can't hurt you," Ginny points out flatly.

"Yes, but when he held a knife to my parents' throats as they were sleeping, it seemed like the wrong moment to test that," Hermione snaps back.

For a moment she's terrified that the hint of asperity has blown her cover, but if anything it's made Ginny's voice soften with sympathy.

"Oh, Hermione. Of course I understand. You'd only just met us too, you had nothing but our word that we were on your side."

She breathes a silent sigh of relief. "Thank you, thank you so much for getting it. I do trust you now though – I just can't stand to have him around anymore. I need help in getting rid of him, or I'll go insane."

"We can do that for you," Ginny says. "But we'll need your help." She hesitates. "Hermione, has Draco – touched you – in any way? Left any marks on you? Perhaps they were painful?"

"Yes," Hermione says. "Two coats-of-arms of the House of Malfoy on my wrists, and another brand on my neck. Are they… will they help us?"

Ginny whistles. _"Help_ us? They'll be central to our entire plan! Do you understand what those brands can do?"

"No," she says, voice still weak.

"Basically, Malfoy's put himself on a leash. And _you're_ the one holding it. It's totally incredible – demons can brand humans with their marks, but the flipside is that humans can summon the demon whenever and wherever they want, as long as they touch it. It's a big step. I honestly can't believe he's done it to you. He must be really obsessed with you, and I don't understand why at all," she adds, with frank and insulting disbelief.

Hermione grits her teeth. "Neither do I," she says.

"I'll have to check them to make sure they really are demon summoning brands and not just, tattoos or whatever, but then we can go ahead with our plan. Can you meet me at Hogwarts tomorrow morning? Say ten a.m.?"

Her parents will be home tomorrow since it's a Saturday, and she's volunteering at her local Salvation Army at twelve, but she'll deal with those things later.

"Ten a.m. is perfect," Hermione says. Her anger has fled. In its place is a cold, hard clarity.

She knows exactly what she's going to do.

* * *

The next morning Hermione wakes up at six again. She feels too jittery to read the _Financial Times_. Her parents won't wake for another hour; she checked on them last night before bed, just to make sure Draco's false memories took, and is pleased to see they have no conception of the fact that she didn't come home until eight p.m. She sternly tells her twinging conscience that it's better this way. At least now they won't worry about her.

At nine thirty, she goes downstairs, to where her father is watching the news and her mother is doing a crossword. She's in yesterday's long-sleeved, high-necked top to cover up her brands. They frown when they see she's got her shoes on.

"Where are you going?" her father asks. "Volunteering isn't for another few hours, is it?"

"The Salvation Army asked me to come in a couple of hours earlier today," she lies. "I'll be back at the normal time."

He nods and thankfully doesn't question it. Lacing up her Converses, Hermione makes her way to the church. The blistering heatwave has finally broken and today it's a far more reasonable nineteen degrees. Sporadic bursts of sunlight illuminate her face as she walks.

She's ten minutes early but Ginny – and, unsurprisingly, Ron and Harry – are already there. All three of them are dressed in black: shirts, dark jeans, and boots.

Ron sneers as soon as he sees her. "So, you were lying when you said you'd never heard of Malfoy?"

Git. She strives to keep her voice even as she replies, "I was rather in fear of my life then, so yes."

"Ron, that's enough," Harry interjects. He offers her a kind smile. "Hermione, I'm so glad you were able to tell us eventually. I completely understand why you didn't before, but we can help you now. Ginny says Draco branded you?"

In response, she pushes up her sleeves. The Malfoy crests wink up at them in the sunlight filtering through the windows, in which motes of dust twirl and dance. The little snakes which surround the shields seem almost to be moving.

Ron hisses, flinching backwards, and Harry sucks in a breath. "Yes," he says. "That's a brand, alright."

"Hells," Ginny murmurs. "A Malfoy brand." She taps her shoulders, and it takes Hermione a shocked moment to realise that the demon girl has _crossed herself_.

"Well, there's no doubt about that," Harry says. He smiles again at Hermione, though it's significantly more strained than the last one was. "This is actually good news. We can summon him now when we want. What we'll do is, we'll set up a pentangle of containment and put Draco in it. Then we kill him."

"A pentangle of containment?" Hermione repeats.

"Drawn in a combination of powdered silver and belladonna," Ginny explains. "You'll summon him into it by pressing your brands. He won't be able to escape it – nothing with a single drop of demon blood can cross a barrier made out of those ingredients. Which is why Ron, Harry and I can't get too close; we can't risk getting trapped in it ourselves. But you'll be fine. We'll give you a knife of blessed iron, and then you can just stab him. It'll be easy!" She beams at Hermione as though she truly believes that.

"Wait just one moment," Hermione says, blinking. "Stab him? I don't know about that, I've never stabbed anyone _ever_ and that seems like the wrong time to test my skills –"

"Hermione, you want to be a doctor," Harry interrupts. "It'll be fine. Just think of it as a dissection, alright?"

"Kidneys stay still on the table when you cut into them though, I doubt Draco will be so obliging," she says drily.

"You don't need to stab his heart or anything," Ron says. "Literally just as long as the blessed iron enters his bloodstream, he'll be a goner. Don't you want revenge against him for all the things you say he's done to you? Sounds to me like the perfect revenge."

She sees she has no choice. "Alright," she acquiesces, though her tone is still highly doubtful. "If it's the only way, I'll do it."

"It is," Ginny says, not without sympathy. "We'll be there, of course, but you can step in and out of the pentangle whereas if he dragged us into it we'd be stuck there with him, so you're genuinely the least at risk out of all of us."

Hermione shifts from foot to foot. "So, speaking of risk, is Draco very much more powerful than us?" she asks. "I mean, I'd like to have an accurate picture of how we match up…"

They exchange swift glances. Harry is the one to speak.

"He is more powerful than us," he says carefully. "He's the Devil's son, so obviously he has a measure of Lucius's magic, plus he's one of the purest-blooded people in Hell. But that's not to say we have no chance! Not even Malfoy can get out of a pentangle of containment. Really, all you need to do is summon him and stick the knife in anywhere."

"Fine," Hermione says. That was exactly what she wanted to hear. She makes sure to flavour her voice with just a hint of doubt, combined with determination. "Let's do it."

"Where?" Ginny asks Harry. He nibbles a nail thoughtfully.

"Field at the back of the church?"

"No," Hermione says sharply. "I want it done in my bedroom."

Ron looks faintly surprised. "You want to kill a demon in your bedroom?"

"That's where he… branded me, and threatened me," she says, voice cold. "It was my sanctuary, and he shattered it. I won't feel safe there again unless I see him dead there with my own eyes."

Ron shrugs. "Fair enough. Your bedroom it is, then. What time do you want us?"

"Five," she says. That's an hour after she returns from volunteering, so she can inform her parents that she'll be having friends over. And possibly not to worry if they hear anything, since they plan on watching a film. Her parents will be reluctant; they'll want her to focus on her university applications, not friendships. But if she says that Ginny insisted, they'll have no choice but to give in.

* * *

They do give in eventually.

"Quite rude of that Weasley girl to invite herself and her brothers over like that," Hermione's mother says tersely.

"I know, Mummy," Hermione says. "But I just couldn't think of a good enough reason to say no."

She sighs. "I suppose not… what do you plan on doing with them? Monopoly? I can go out and buy the game quickly."

"No, that won't be necessary, we'll just watch a film," she says. "The Hunger Games, or something."

Her mother is unenthusiastic but accepts it.

At four forty-five the doorbell rings, and Hermione rushes to answer it. The Weasleys and Harry are standing on the doorstep.

"Dr Granger!" Ginny says brightly as they spot her mother behind them. "Thank you so much for having us over!"

"Well, you had Hermione over, so it's the least we could do," she says, smiling graciously. Her eyes fall on them and she does a double-take, surprise lightening her expression. In the darker gold of the late afternoon sun the three demons are backlit, heads haloed like rising angels, faces remote and perfect.

Hermione performs rapid introductions and then leads the trio up to her bedroom. She's rubbed off the faint pencil markings from when she summoned Lucius and hidden _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_ away, so she's confident there's nothing to give her away or cast suspicion on her intentions. Crookshanks is lying on her bed; she crosses over and urges him out of her room to keep him safe while she watches them get to work.

"God, smells like Malfoy's been practically _living_ in here," Ron says fervently as he crosses the threshold. They all ignore him.

"Right, that looks like a good spot for the pentangle," Ginny says. She points at the same expanse of floor where Lucius was summoned.

Harry nods, and all three of them take out small stoppered glass vials. Inside are gleaming silver granules interspersed with the brown flakes of powdered belladonna. Hermione settles on her mattress and watches with fascination as Ginny crouches down to sketch a large pentangle on the floorboards. Then the three of them unstopper the vials and cautiously pour the contents out, following the pencil lines. They're careful not to get any of the mixture on their skin or inch a finger over the barrier.

"There we go," Harry says in satisfaction, standing up. "That will keep him." The centre of the star is big enough for two people to stand in, and five sharp points radiate out from it like thorns.

Hermione swallows drily. It's going to be difficult to make things fall out the way she wants them to. Demons make formidable enemies. But she's the cleverest girl she's ever known; she can do this.

"Here's the knife," Harry says. He slips off his rucksack and hands her what looks like an ordinary kitchen knife, its blade honed to a needle edge. She frowns as she takes it.

"This is it? The blessed iron?"

"I know it doesn't look like much, but it'll do the job," he says wryly. "Blessed iron is surprisingly difficult to come by for demons, so it's the only weapon we could get."

The three of them arrange themselves by her closed door, as far away from the pentangle as they can get. Hermione's standing in it clutching the knife.

"Remember, press your brand then jump back out," Harry instructs her. "He'll be stuck in the pentangle while you're outside it. Stab him quickly and he'll disintegrate. Don't let him say something, or he'll try to get inside your head. Any questions?"

"No," she says. Her voice is calm.

"Then what are you waiting for?" Ron says.

Without answering him, she rolls up her sleeves. Then pauses. Tucking down the neck of her top instead, she brushes her fingertips over the Hogwarts motto inscribed on her skin. Her nails press down on the word draco.

Instantly she steps backwards, out of the pentangle's reach.

The Devil's son appears inside it. He is more angry and more dangerous than she has ever seen him; his fangs are sharp as razors and so long they nearly touch his chin, while five-inch claws sprout of his fingernails. He's in a black suit with a black shirt under it. The only drop of colour on his outfit is a blood-red tie. It matches the scarlet irises of his eyes. His expression is jovially mocking, but with one look at him Hermione can tell he's still freezingly angry – with her.

"Well, well, well," he purrs. His eyes sweep over the room's inhabitants, coming to rest at last on Hermione herself. Expressionlessly he takes in the knife grasped in her fist. "What a delightful welcome party you've arranged for me, my pet."

"Stab him!" Ron snarls from the doorway.

She stays statue-still. Draco laughs. The sound runs over her skin like a blade, and there isn't an ounce of humour in it.

"It's been a while since I've seen you, Weasel," he muses. "Since I ran you out of Hogwarts, in fact. So this is where you've holed up." His attention moves to Ginny. "You're looking well, She-Weasel. Blaise sends his regards."

Ginny turns white. Draco grins meanly.

"Oh, yes, he says your cunt is still the tightest he's ever had the pleasure of being inside…"

"Shut the fuck up, Malfoy," Harry hisses. Like a viper who's sighted his prey, Draco's head swings towards him.

"Potter, Potter," he drawls. "Well met indeed. How did I know you'd be here, putting your filthy half-blood paws all over my Mudblood? But maybe Hermione reminds you of your mother. Do you call her mummy when you jack off over her?"

Hermione finds her voice. "Stop it, Draco," she growls.

His eyes drift lazily down her entire body, sending heat flushing through her. "Ah, Hermione. I wondered when you'd rediscover your tongue. It did such delightful things to me last night, after all." His voice drips innuendo and sexual satisfaction.

The handle of the knife is hard to hold in her sweaty palm. "That's enough!"

"It isn't nearly enough," he says. His voice is dark and velvety, and he offers her a shark-like grin. "But I can afford to be generous. Double-crossers are among the damned, Hermione. Shouldn't a girl as clever as you know that? You've already ensured your soul will be mine after your death – and I will never let you go."

"I haven't double-crossed anyone," she says.

He lets out a jeering laugh. "No? What do you call my current situation then, a bit of friendly bondage?"

_"Yet,"_ she adds. "I haven't double-crossed anyone yet."

The moment before she does it, she suspects Ron knew. He lets out a roar and launches himself at her, but she sidesteps easily and he crashes into her bookcase. He's too late.

Her leg shoots out and she sweeps aside some powdered silver and belladonna, breaking the line of the pentangle and freeing Draco.

_"Now_ I have," Hermione says.

* * *

**AN: A NOTE ON DRACO AND HERMIONE**

**So I've been hinting heavily at this for the whole story anyway, but Draco and Hermione are two seriously lonely people who wouldn't know positive, healthy relationships if it bit them in the arse. Hence the entire rigmarole of the last few chapters: their idea of love and other emotions isn't supposed to be a good thing. But it's them, and it doesn't mean they don't feel anything at all. **

**Anon who's disappointed by the sex scene: I wanted it to be somewhat vaguely realistic! Instead of having virgin Hermione come 3432 times like in romance novels. Refer to the paragraph above for reassurance that this isn't necessarily a purely mechanical procedure for them, it's just that they don't know of ways to really be emotional about it.**

**Other anon who wrote a lovely review: you totally blessed my day with it too, and I love you too even though I don't know who you are! (Same to all my reviewers, incidentally :D) Thanks to everyone who voted on my next story idea, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter as well! If all goes well I'll be wrapping up this story tomorrow night!**


	12. XII: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil

**Chapter XII: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil**

_**(biblical)**_

Everything that comes next happens very quickly and yet as slow as sand.

As soon as the power of containment over him is broken, Draco rushes out of the pentangle in a storm of icy rage. Hermione relinquishes the knife when he snatches it from her hand. He's a sight to behold: all of his teeth have lengthened into daggers, his eyes have bled to pure midnight, and his lip is curled back in a vicious snarl.

A scream is making the rafters ring. After a moment, she identifies the voice as Ginny's.

Harry throws himself at Draco and the two boys collide in mid-air, but the pureblood Devil's son against a half-blood demon? It isn't a fair fight at all. Hermione's nose wrinkles as Draco plunges the knife into Harry's back, but she's relieved to see that there's no messy and unpleasant spurt of blood. Instead, Harry disintegrates into a shower of ash which falls to the floor and lies there, glittering grey.

Ron and Ginny, who's still screaming, launch themselves at Draco next. They've shifted into demonic form, and Hermione's eyes widen as she sees huge antler-like horns erupt from Ron's head. They give Draco a little more trouble: Ginny manages to slash at his face, and Ron sinks his fangs into Draco's arm. But then the Devil's son rips out his throat with his claws and finishes him off with the knife for good measure. It isn't long before Ginny goes the same way.

Soon, Hermione and Draco are the only people left in her room, staring at each other.

He's panting heavily. His iris-less, pupil-less eyes are fixed unblinkingly on hers, and his own blood is smeared down one high cheekbone. The sight is oddly arousing. In his torn suit, muscles flexing underneath a ruined shirt, he looks like an elegantly violent warrior. He's still holding the blessed iron knife.

She breaks the silence. "What happens to demons when you die?"

When he speaks, his voice is a low growl, spit out from behind his elongated canines. "Nothingness," he says. "There is no afterlife for demons. We vanish into dust and ether, starlight and shadows."

She makes a moue with her mouth. Ron and Harry and Ginny gone. Just like that. Or is Harry gone? Does his human blood mean he'll go on to meet the Dark Lord?

She'd ask, but Draco is already speaking. "Thought you were mad at me," he says. His voice is casual, but his eyes are watchful. He doesn't know what to make of her yet.

She isn't totally sure she knows what to make of herself. But she's getting there.

"I _was_ mad at you," she admits stiffly. "I was so angry at you. You have _no idea_ how much. You lied to me constantly – first about not being in a contract, then about being in a contract. You took me to the same place you take all your other whores. You're the – the fucking Devil's son. And I'm a Mudblood girl."

He tosses the knife to the floor. "What changed?" he says. He hasn't blinked once since their conversation started.

She shrugs uncomfortably. Why are emotions such awful things? So wonderful, yet so terrible. She wants to break her gaze away from him, but she can't. His eyes are like two black holes in his white face, sucking her in.

He won't let her avoid the question. "_What changed_?" he says insistently.

She has no choice but to answer. "I remembered the Grey Lady, and the Bloody Baron," she says at last. "You don't know how to love someone, any more than I do. We never have before. I, at least, never will again. But you showed me what demonic love is like: it's obsession, and terror, and possession. I realised what lay at the root of all your attempts to trap me and damn me. Your love, and my love, isn't nice at all. It's real – and I want it more than I've ever wanted anything before."

In two strides her demon lover is by her side, and Hermione is lifted up to his face. He kisses her voraciously, ravenously, as though he can suck her soul out through her mouth.

Perhaps he can. Perhaps she'll let him. Perhaps he already has.

She kisses him back just as wildly, her nails digging into the muscles of his shoulders. She knows she'll leave bruises behind. There's blood in their mouths and madness in their touch and she could do this for _ever._

Lucius has granted her one true wish. Will he twist it? He'll try, no doubt. He _is_ the Devil. But there is one thing which even the Devil must bow to, and that is Love, however unholy. Wasn't it Draco who said that once? And he would know.

Then something important occurs to her, and she pulls back with difficulty. He bites her lip hard in punishment. Nothing has ever felt better.

"With that said," she says, "if you ever have sex with anyone other than me ever again, I'll make the torments of Hell seem mild in comparison to what I'll do to you."

He throws his head back and laughs, the long pale column of his throat gleaming ivory. "You have nothing to worry about, my pet," he says. "I always knew I wanted to have you, but I don't even know when I fell in love with you. I, too, never will love anyone but you. How could I? No other girl – human or demon – could match me as well as you do. And I knew that before I even knew I wanted you. Look at what I did for Crookshanks!"

She blinks. "Crookshanks? What about him?" Reflexively she goes to pick him up, until she remembers that she removed him to keep him safe during the fight.

"He died. I reanimated him," Draco explains simply.

Hermione chokes. _"What?"_

"A car ran him over on Wednesday afternoon while you were at the surgery," Draco says. "Just after we met for the first time, at lunch. I saw it when I came by to see what sort of house my father had tasked me to watch over. I knew that losing him would… affect you strongly. And even then, I cared. So I brought him back to life with Inferi magic."

Dizziness rushes through her. She remembers the odd vision she'd seen, of her cat lying headless on her doorstep in a pool of blood, and how the next moment he was back to normal. She sways slightly.

"Oh, my God," she whispers. "Thank… thank you."

He shrugs, looking unexpectedly and endearingly bashful. "Animals usually go to nothingness when they die, just like demons, but Inferi always end up in Hell. So this way you can bring your cat with you to Hell too," he says. He hesitates, remembering her previous flareup. "You know you're damned to Hell now, right? Whether you wish it or not."

"I do wish it, you moron, or I wouldn't have done what I did," Hermione says, rolling her eyes. "So what happens now?"

"Now?" He shrugs again. "Now you live out your human life as mine. And then you die, and you spend your eternity as mine too."

She laughs. "I approve of that plan, but that's not quite what I meant. I meant more about the Order, and the fact that I let you kill three of their members."

He glances down at the piles of ash which were once Ron, Harry and Ginny as though he's just recalled their existence. "Oh, yes," he says. "I must say, until you broke the pentangle I wasn't totally sure what you planned to do next, and that just made me love you even more. Though why did you let me kill three of their members?"

"They'd never have left us alone," she says simply. "Ron always hated me, I think. Ginny was indifferent and Harry was too connected to them for us to let him loose. They would have hunted you until the end of their days – and I'm not losing you to anything. Not even death."

She leaves her other motivation unsaid. She needed to prove to _herself_ as well as to him that she has what it takes to be the lover of the Devil's son, to scheme and plot and _win._ She can be a Narcissa, a Lucius – a Malfoy.

She's proven that to both their satisfactions now.

A fierce light is glowing in his eyes, and she's sure it's reflected in her own. He bends her backwards over his arm for another deep, hard kiss involving lots of tongue before she tugs at his shirt to get some air.

"I suppose the Order will want revenge against me?" she says questioningly. "But they can't hurt me, can they?"

He shakes his head. "No, they can't. As you correctly deduced, the Order consists only of purebloods and half-bloods, none of whom can lay a violent finger on Mudbloods such as yourself. The most they could do is stare threateningly at you through your windows. And if they do _that,_ why, summon me instantly – in the unlikely event I'm not already by your side – and I'll deal with them for you."

Her last vestiges of niggling concern flee. She'd thought out every aspect of her plan in advance, and was certain there was only very limited risk, but it's good to have the confirmation.

"Well, she says, "in that case –"

The rest of her sentence is muffled by his sharp teeth and sharper kiss.

* * *

**AN: Epilogue up in a few hours!**


	13. Epilogue: Give the Devil His Due

**DON'T FORGET TO READ CHAPTER 12 BEFORE THIS ONE! I DOUBLE-UPDATED BUT I'M NOT SURE TWO EMAILS WENT OUT**

* * *

**Epilogue: Give the Devil His Due**

**(_William Shakespeare_ – Henry IV Part I)**

The stone floor of Malfoy Manor is cold under Hermione's feet.

She left Draco behind in bed, fast asleep, one arm thrown around the pillow she substituted for her body, so he doesn't wake up at feeling an uncustomary emptiness in his embrace. Normally she loves to watch Draco sleep.

But not tonight. Tonight, she feels restless, as she rarely has since she died.

How long has it been since Dr Hermione Granger took her last breath? She isn't entirely sure. Time moves a little differently in Hell. And it doesn't help that demons live forever. In the seventy-seven years of her mortal life, she aged as any human woman does, while Draco never looked older than eighteen.

Did it lead to crises? Of course. Hermione has always struggled with her self-image. When she was thirty, and having sex with a boy who looked sixteen, it was depraved and delicious. But then she was forty, having sex with a boy who looked seventeen, and suddenly she remembered or rediscovered all the things she hated about her body. Her sagging breasts, her stretch marks, her belly and thick calves. The day someone asked if she was Draco's mother was the day that nearly pushed her over the edge.

But then he reminded her that they didn't care about silly Mudblood words and silly Mudblood rules. He is the Devil's son and she is his mate; they don't need to know anything more than that.

So she lived out the rest of her days on earth as the eternal spinster Dr Granger, who frigidly rebuffed all of the few attempts men made to ask her out, yet whose patients recovered from life-threatening diseases as though through miracles. (Not quite miracles. But who's asking?) She thinks her parents suspected. Oh, not that she was with a demon, of course: the senior Drs Granger were atheists. But that someone secret lay behind her continued refusal to meet other men.

Certainly, sometimes her colleagues asked her the identity of the young, handsome, frightening blond man who sometimes picked her up and dropped her off. A cousin? A nephew? Or then, as she got older, from people unfamiliar with her: a grandson?

But she never told.

"You look like you're thinking deep thoughts, Hermione," a deep voice drawls from behind her.

She turns around with a slight start. She hadn't realised that she fell into a reverie while staring at a basilisk-scale coat of armour, standing in the middle of a corridor. Her father-in-law is directly behind her.

"Not too deep, Lucius," she says with a smile that exposes the tips of her fangs. She had to beg Draco to let her have them, but she likes the way they look. And he likes the way they feel on his skin while they're having sex. "Just thinking about my mortal past."

He hums and comes to stand next to her. Now both of them are staring at the armour. They remain in companionable silence for a while until he breaks it.

"Are you satisfied with the outcome of your wish, Hermione Granger?"

"Hermione _Malfoy,"_ she corrects. "And I must say that I am."

"Many have wished for love before," he muses. "But this is the first time they were happy with the outcome."

She shrugs. "I never had a particular type of love in mind. A friend, a lover, even someone whom I knew would care about me regardless of my cleverness – that was all I wanted. But I must say, I've been wondering about something."

He raises a blond eyebrow. "Oh? Do tell."

"Why did you send Draco and Theo to watch over me for those forty-nine nights at the beginning?" she asks. "I have my theories, of course, but… _why?_ Why am I the one person whose wish you never twisted, whose contract you never upended?"

He seems to change the subject. "What do you know of telling the future?"

Reflexively her lip curls. She remembers Albus Dumbledore, whom Draco tried and failed to kill when she was eighteen, who was eventually murdered by one of his own lieutenants.

"I know there are people who say they can see it," she says. "And that you can see it best of all. But let's just say I've always struggled with the concept."

He barks out a laugh. "You would, my dear. Well, let it be known that I am the Devil and I have the True Sight, granted me on the condition I say nothing of what I see. But I can act – and when Draco was seven years old, I learnt that the love of my son's life would be the Mudblood girl who managed to summon me fifty years after I was last called up. So I ordered Draco and Theodore to watch over you, to – shall we say – allow you to spend time together."

She's silent as she absorbs this. Theo, who is now a good friend of hers as well as of Draco's, often good-humouredly pokes fun at them for the fact that Draco forbade him from coming along on their nightly dates after the first time. She wonder how much he suspected.

"Well," Hermione says at last, "I still have issues with seeing the future. But I must say that on this occasion, I'm glad you listened to what you saw."

He grins. "Have we made a believer out of you, Hermione Malfoy?"

"No. This is just a one-time exception," she says primly.

Then they laugh together, the Devil and his daughter-in-law.

* * *

**AN: SO THAT'S THE END OF MY FIRST EVER MULTI-CHAPTER FIC! I'm kind of shook because I thought it would always be To Kingdom Come (there's only one chapter and an epilogue left for that, go check it out!) but this story idea just bit me and wouldn't let go. I haven't really done justice to the vision I had of it inside my head, but I'm still pretty pleased with the outcome and I really, really hope you all enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing! I think I've managed to tie up all my loose ends but let me know if anything is left! A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who left reviews, especially those who reviewed faithfully every chapter. I love you!**

**NEXT UP: Finishing TKC, then I'm starting work on _The Liar's Kiss_ \- first chapter up in a few days! Not to self-promo, but follow me if you'd like to know when it's up. I go back to uni in October, and speaking of academics if by some wild chance you are a UK-based lawyer let me know... :P I may write _The Quick and the Damned _on the side anyway because I miss my Jily, but the Dramione is a cert!**

**Anyway, thanks for being on this journey with me :D**


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